CyberDrive CW088D IDE CD-RW - Page 6

CDR Tests

- Procedure

We tested the drive with latest version of Nero/CloneCD. The media list we used can be found in the Writing Quality page. Cyberdrive CW088D supports a variety of writing speeds starting from 4X up to 48X.

Cyberdrive CW088D decides the optimum writing speed for the disc inserted. The drive checks the inserted media and lowers the writing speed when the selected writing speed is higher than the maximum allowed for safe and accurate recordings. The below picture comes from Nero Burning Rom, where the maximum allowed writing speed is limited to 36X.

Cyberdrive recommends the following media for writing at the maximum 48X speed. As you may notice, the supported media list is pretty much limited to 9 brands. There is no way to force the drive writing at the maximum speed, all media:

For our recording tests at 48X, we used the Cyberdrive 48X media that came in the retail kit, Ciba Plasmon 80min 48X, and Mitsubishi Chemicals 80min 48X. We also managed to write in the maximum supported speed with SanyoDigital (Plasmon based) 80min 24X media. The duration of each writing process is showed below:

- CyberDrive 80min 48X : 2:40 min
- SanyoDigital 80min 24X : 2:38 min
- Ciba Plasmon 80min 48x : 2:36 min
- Mitsubishi Chemicals 80min 48x : 2:37 min

- Recording Tests

Cyberdrive CW088D is the fastest 48X writer in the test. The drive finished the writing in 156 seconds, 5 seconds faster than Asus CRW4816A. Note that in this test we just examine the writing speed and not the produced quality.

The following picture is from Nero after a successful burning of Cyberdrive CW088D at 48X.

All the writing times for the various supported speeds of Cyberdrive are illustrated below:

The time differences between the faster recording speed of 48X and the rest are:

- 16X: 154secs
- 20X: 105secs
- 24X: 73secs
- 28X: 62secs
- 32X: 38secs
- 36X: 33secs
- 40X: 28secs

The following picture is from Nero after a successful burning of Cyberdrive CW088D at 40X.

We also noticed that sometimes, according to the inserted media, the drive may enable 36X or 24X writing speed, but the actual writing will be performed in lower recording speed. The below picture shows that 36X writing speed was selected, but the actual recording time, indicates 20X writing speed.

The next picture shows more clearly the reduction of the writing speed from 24X->16X:

- Overburning Tests

- CD-Text Results

The drive can read/write CD-Text without any problems.

- CloneCD Writing Tests

CloneCD reports that the drive support the DAO-RAW feature. We performed our usual tests and we confirmed that both drives support the DAO-RAW writing mode at the following CD protections: SafeDisc 1/2, LaserLock 1/2 and SecuROM 2. Under DAO-RAW mode, the drive uses the maximum 48x recording speed, with the use of appropriate media.

For checking the drive's EFM correction status, we used 3 different game titles with various SafeDisc 2 versions. For getting the maximum of them, we used the latest software patches. We used the CyberDrive CW088D both as reader/writer at maximum reading/recording speed. We burned two discs for each game (Amplify Weak Sectors On/Off) and the results are posted in the below table:

As the test results showed, the CW088D drive can backup up to SD2 v2.50.020 version without the need of Amplify Weak Sectors. However with the latest v2.51.021+ builds it will not produce 100% correct playback disc. The backup did not work in any drive, even when the backup was written with the amplify weak sectors enabled. According to the CloneCD official website, the drive doesn't support at all EFM correction.