CD-ROM Roundup Vo1 - Page 3

CloneCD Reading Tests

- Procedure

We used CloneCD (v3.2.3.1) and 5 original CDs - Euro 2000 (SafeDisc 1), Serious Sam (SafeDisc 2), Rally Masters (LaserLock 1), Desperados (LaserLock 2) and V-Rally 2 Expert (SecuROM 2) - in order to test the reading performance of the drives. We also tested its reading performance with backups of the original CDs, since the reading speed varies between the original and the backup media.

CloneCD reports that all the drives support multisession, read of digital audio CDs and the produced digital audio data is accurate.

- PSX Pressed Media

For this test we used the PSX game 'NBA Jam Extreme' and we ripped the image to HD with CloneCD. We measured the reading times of all the drives.

Mitsumi had hard times in this test and finished the task after 9:39 min. Cyberdrive gave the best result with 110 seconds, and Samsung/Creative follow with a 40 second lower performance.

SafeDisc 1/2 Results

Good performance from Mitsumi with a similar behavior with the original and the backup title. Samsung is much slower with 268.78 sectors/sec for the original CD, and Cyberdrive reduced the reading speed too much with SafeDisc v.1 protected CDs. Creative 52x was too slow in this test so we excluded this performance in the above chart.

Mitsumi is still the faster drive with SafeDisk v.2 discs. Samsung, Cyberdrive and Creative follow with lower performances. However, Samsung was the only drive that produced a SafeDisc v2 working backup.

LaserLock 1/2 Results

In the LaserLock v.1 test, Creative did not give any chances to the other drives, and finished the original /backup CD test with 495.42/2232.83 sectors/sec. The second best performance comes from Mitsumi, Cyberdrive and Samsung follow with lower performances.

All the drives lowered their performance in the LaserLock v2.0 test, but their behavior remains the same as in the previous test.

SecuROM Results

This time, Cyberdrive leads the race with 1008.11 sectors/sec for the SecuROM v.2 title test. Creative follows with the same performance for the original/backup test. Samsung and Mitsumi gave close to each other performances in the original CD test, and in the backup test, Samsung is a little faster.