Datawrite Media Tests - Page 1

Introduction

Datawrite is undoubtedly one of the most widely recognized and respected brands in the field of optical media storage. Indeed, since its establishment in 1992 Datawrite has managed to exceed the market’s expectations by producing premium quality, affordable media. The global success that Datawrite has incurred is a testament to the record-breaking achievements of its official distributor E-Net Distribution, one of the largest brand management companies of blank media in the world.

E-Net, which is based in the UK, is constantly expanding and has recently opened E-Net FZCO in Dubai. This means that E-Net is now in a prime position to further its success by addressing territories in both the Middle East and North Africa. Through E-Net the brand Datawrite will continue to be at the cutting edge of data storage technology. In fact, it has recently introduced a new dvd-r 8x into the market that has set a precedent for all other discs to follow, codenamed Titanium. This disc is a follow up to the highly successful Datawrite Titanium CD-R that was launched in Europe several years ago. The Titanium dvd-r utilizes state of the art Mitsubishi dye used only on top tier brand names at a ground- breaking price, meaning that the compatibility and replication of data is second to none. Datawrite have been working with manufacturers for a new generation of 8X DVD-R which will most likely be based around the same dye/codes as the new Datawrite Titanium.

The culmination of quality and the infinite variety of products provided by Datawrite has given the consumer superb choice at the right price.

The ID codes of the media we used for our tests are presented in the following table:

For our recordings we used 24 different drives. The models and their firmware revisions are summarized in the table below. At the time of the tests, the firmware versions used were the latest for each drive.

- Test Method

In order to test the writing quality and readability of the burned media, we used two readers with two software applications:

• The LiteON SOHD-167T with patched firmware being able to read DVD5 up to 16X CAV and DVD9 up to 10X CAV. For the transfer rate tests we used Nero CDSpeed ( v3.55).
• The Plextor PX-712A with the latest available firmware ( v1.05). For scanning the disc, we used PlexTools 2.17 version at 2X CLV reading speed, BURST mode, with middle accuracy.

In general, a "perfect" disc should have a smooth reading curve, very low PIE/POE and zero (0) POF error rates. Most times however, even though a disc has very low PIE/POE error rates, the reading curve may not be smooth containing dropoffs. Due to the fact that we oversped the reading capabilities of the LiteON SOHD-167T, such drops are expected, especially near the outer area of the disc.

The measurements in the following pages should be taken not as the absolute criteria of the burning quality, but as an indication level. You can always read users' opinions and share you experiences with these media in our forum section.

- Testing software

1. Nero CD-DVD Speed v3.55
2. PlexTools v2.17
3. Nero Burning Rom v6.6.0.3
4. DVD Decrypter 3.2.2.0
5. CopyToDVD 3.0.32.54

More information about our test machine are included in the table below: