Optiarc BC-5500S Slim Laptop Drive Review

Reading performance:

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We will use Nero CD/DVD-Speed to read various CD and DVD Discs; including audio discs and DVD-media.

Pressed discs:

For this test we used an original pressed CD-ROM disc containing the World of Warcraft that is about 74 minutes in length.

The Optiarc BC-5500S makes it to 25.26x.

For comparison we have made the following table:

As you can see from our chart the Optiarc BC-5500S is the fastest drive reading our pressed CD-ROM discs.

CD-Recordable Discs:

For this test we used the same Pressed Data CD-R as above and made a copy using Nero Express “Copy Entire CD”. The disc we used was a Microboards Technology 48x CD-R disc manufactured by Taiyo Yuden burned at 8X.

The Optiarc BC-5500S reached 25.02x when reading the copied Pressed Data disc.

For comparison we have made the following table:

The Optiarc BC-5500S does an excellent job when reading back CD-Recordable discs.

CD-Rewritable discs:

We made another Data CD with Nero Express “Copy Entire CD”, this time we are using a Memorex (24X) CD-RW disc.

The Optiarc BC-5500S read the CD-RW discs back at the top speed of 16.83x speed.

For comparison we have made the following table:

The Optiarc BC-5500S is the slowest drive when reading our CD-Rewritable disc.

Audio – Digital Audio Extraction

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To test the digital audio extraction performance of the Optiarc BC-5500S we used Nero CD-DVD Speed to measure the transfer rate. The audio disc we used is 79 minutes in length (79:47.10).

The Optiarc BC-5500S reached 21.25X when reading a full pressed audio disc

For comparison we have made the following table:

The Optiarc BC-5500S did ok when reading our Pressed Audio-CD disc.

Advanced audio – DAE quality test:

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For our next test we will use the “Advanced DAE Quality Test” feature in Nero CD-DVD Speed. The CD-R media we are using is 52X certified Taiyo Yuden CD-R made by Taiyo Yuden. (Thanks to Rima.com for sending us this media.)

The extracting quality is excellent but the drive cannot read the lead-in and lead-out. The drive was too slow to do On-the-fly copying at 10x, 12x and 16x.

DVD reading performance:

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Again, we will use Nero CD-DVD Speed to measure the reading performance, this time for various types of DVD discs.

DVD – DVD-Video:

For our DVD reading performance tests we are going to start with Single and Double Layered DVD video discs. While only 1X speed is required to watch DVD movies, it’s useful to be able to read the discs at higher speeds if you’re going to extract (rip) the content of the disc to your hard drive.

DVD-Video Single Layer

DVD-Video Double Layer

The Optiarc BC-5500S reads a pressed DVD-Video at 4X for a Single Layer disc and reads a Double Layer disc at around 4X.

For comparison we have made the following table:

The Optiarc BC-5500S performed well compared with the other drives on both DVD-Video Single Layer and DVD-Video Double Layer reading tests.

DVD+R and DVD+RW:

For this next test we used a Verbatim 16x DVD+R and a Ritek 8X DVD+RW both with 4.38GB of data. (Thanks to Ritek USA and Verbatim USA for sending us this media.) Below are the results:

DVD+R

DVD+RW

For comparison we have made the following table:

The Optiarc BC-5500S posts respectable speeds when reading our DVD+R disc at 8.10X speed but only reading our DVD+RW disc at 3.99X speed.

Now let’s see how it will perform on DVD-R/RW discs.

DVD–R and DVD-RW:

For this test we used a Verbatim 16x DVD-R and a Verbatim 6X DVD-RW with 4.38GB of data. (Thanks to Verbatim USA for sending us this media.) Below are the results:

DVD-R

DVD-RW

For comparison we have made the following table:

The Optiarc BC-5500S performs very well reading the DVD-R disc at 8.10X speed but the DVD-RW disc at only read at 4.00X speed.

DVD – DVD±R DL:

For this test we used a Verbatim 8x DVD+R DL and a Verbatim 8x DVD-R DL disc both filled with 7.96GB of data. (Thanks to Verbatim USA for sending us this media.) Our test results are found below:

DVD+R DL

DVD-R DL

For comparison we have made the following table:

The Optiarc BC-5500S performs slow while reading DVD+R DL and DVD-R DL at around 4x speed.

DVD-RAM

For this part of our test we are using a Maxell 5x DVD-RAM filled with 4.27GB of data. Our test results are found below:

For comparison we have made the following table:

The Optiarc BC-5500S performs very well while reading DVD-RAM at 5x.

An Introduction to Blu-Ray Disc:

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Until recently, optical disc technologies such as DVD, DVD±R, DVD±RW, and DVD-RAM relied on a red laser to read and write data. The new technology Blu-Ray format uses a blue-violet laser, which explains the name Blu-ray.

Blu-ray drives can also be made backwards compatible with CDs and DVDs through the use of a BD/DVD/CD compatible optical pickup unit.

A blue-violet laser (405nm) has a shorter wavelength than a red laser (650nm); this makes it possible to focus the laser with even greater accuracy. This will allow data to be packed more tightly, so it’s possible to squeeze more data on the disc even though it’s the same size as a CD/DVD. This together with the change of numerical aperture to 0.85 enables Blu-ray discs to hold 25GB/50GB.

Blu-ray media is structurally different from DVD media. The Blu-ray disc consists of a single 1.1 mm thick polycarbonate substrate with a 0.1 mm thick cover layer on the bottom side of the disc, while the DVD disc is made of two 0.6 mm thick substrates. In both cases, two substrates are bonded together by a UV-cured resin adhesive:

DVD vs. Blu-ray disc structure

The larger 25 GB and 50 GB storage capacity of the Blu-ray disc is due to the higher density of pits and tracks on the disc. Unlike previous optical discs, Blu-ray uses a shorter-wavelength, tighter-focused violet laser to read and write pits that are about three times smaller than pits used in DVDs:

CD, DVD and Blu-ray laser beam color and size

CD, DVD and Blu-ray pits and tracks as seen by a scanning electron microscope

Blu-ray disc surface mapped by an atomic force microscope

Blu-Ray

Here we will look at how the Optiarc BC-5500S performs when reading Blu-Ray discs.

BD-ROM SL

The Optiarc BC-5500S read our SL BD-ROM at a peak speed of 2.00X.

BD-ROM DL

The Optiarc BC-5500S read our DL BD-ROM at peak speed of 2.00X.

BD-R SL

The Optiarc BC-5500S reader had no problem reading our SL BD-R at a top speed of 4.04X.

BD-RE SL

The Optiarc BC-5500S did a great job of reading our BD-RE disc at a top speed of 4.04X.

BD-R DL

The Optiarc BC-5500S was able to read our TDK BD-R DL disc at a top speed of 4.02X.

BD-RE DL

The Optiarc BC-5500S did a great job of reading our BD-RE Dual Layer disc at a top speed of 4.04X.

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Overall thoughts:

The Optiarc BC-5500S did a good job while reading CD media, Single Layer DVD and Blu-ray media. The drive did lag a little behind the competition in reading DVD Rewritable and Dual Layer DVD media.

Now it’s time to head on to the next section: CD-R/CD-RW Writing Performance…

• Features and Technology
• CD-R/RW Writing Performance