Aopen DRW8800/AAN - Page 6

- Reading Tests

To create an image of the various protected titles onto a hard disk, we used Alcohol 120% v1.4.8.1222 and the appropriate settings, depending on the protection type of the inserted discs. Below are summarized the capabilities of the Aopen drive, according to CloneCD software. The summary below shows that the drive supports writing of CD+G under RAW DAO:

The game titles we used to test the reading speed for each protection scheme are given in the table below:

PSX Pressed Media

SafeDisc v.2

SecuROM v.2

Except form the PSX ripping, where the Aopen drive was the fastest, in the other two cases it had average performance.

- Writing Tests

The Aopen drive supports the DAO-RAW writing mode. For checking the drive's EFM correction status, we used 3 different game titles with different SafeDisc versions and with the latest software patches installed. After making the image files of the various titles to the hard disk, we burned them (maximum speed) with Alcohol 120%. Two different discs were created for each title; one with the "Bypass EFM error" enabled and one more with the function disabled.

The table below shows the results of the attempted backups and whether they working (game installed / played normally), or not.

The Aopen drive made only one playable copy among all tested games. The drive is definitely not a good solution for backing up protected games. The only game that was playable was Max Payne that has the oldest Safedisc protection scheme of all tested games. Moreover, the compatibility of the valid copy was restricted since the Aopen was the only device on which the game could play.