CD-RW Writing Performance

The specifications of the Lite-On SOHR-5239V state that the drive also supports 32x writing to CD-RW media. Let us now find out how the drive really performs.

For our data writing tests, we simply set up a new compilation of 703Mb using Nero Burning ROM software. Writing method used is DAO (Disc At Once), and the disc is set up as a non-multisession disc with “finalize disc” enabled. The screenshot below shows how long it takes to write a disc at the highest speed. (32x)

As you can see in the screenshot above, the Lite-On SOHR-5239V took 4 minutes and 1 second to complete the burn at 32x speed.

CD-RW Writing Quality

For these tests we will be using 4 different CD-RW media from 3 different manufacturers.

To really measure the write speed, we used the ‘create data CD" function in Nero CD-Speed. The discs were written at the maximum speed that the drive supports.

For the quality test, we used K-Probe 2 which is a tool developed by a Lite-On employee. It runs under Windows and works with drives made by Lite-On. Also note that different drives and different reading speeds may affect the results obtained when scanning the discs. We used our review drive and scanned the discs at 48X speed.

A written CD-RW disc will always have some C1 errors; C1 errors are easily corrected by the drive’s error correction capabilities. The next level of errors is C2, while C2 errors could also be corrected by most drive’s error correction capabilities; they are not wanted on a good quality disc. A good disc should not contain any C2 errors, and preferably have an average C1 error amount of below 2.0 for the best discs, or at least below 10.0 averages for good quality discs. After C2 errors, there are only un-correctable errors that will make a disc unusable.

No C2 errors and 11.80 C1 errors, we have expected a better result for this high quality, Mitsubishi Chemicals manufactured, high quality media.

A much better result than the one for the 32x version of this media. A C1 average of 4.68 places this disc into the “good quality discs” category.

Again a very good result for a 24x CD-RW media. This CMC Magnetics manufactured, TDK CD-RW goes into the “good quality discs” category.

A surprisingly good result with this Ritek manufactured FujiFilm CD-RW, even when the burn was slow. With a very low C1 average of 0.81 and no C2 errors, this CD-RW fits into the “best quality discs” category.

Overall thoughts:

The CD-RW performance of this drive is not as good as the CD-R writing performance of the drive but it burns CD-RW media with almost very good quality.

Now let’s move to the next page and look into some advanced tests…….