CD Data Tests

- Performance Notes

We had some strange behaviour from ASUS E616 during our reading tests (mostly with CD format). The drive keeps slowing down at the end of the tests, during reading our test discs (down to 28x or 6x)... We had to re-adjust speed at Nero CD Speed. This wasn't noticed with the Toshiba drive.

Other users have reported that:

- Will not read a CD for about 8 seconds and then finally spin up properly.

- Sometimes (in fact often) when a disc spins down (like when the drive doesn't read from the CD for several minutes or more), and when a program or game tries to read something from the cd, it takes REALLY LONG to spin up (the HDD led lights and it seems that Windows is trying to access the drive but it can't), and sometimes when it does (after more than 10-15 seconds), the program (or game, or movie) can't see the data of the disc...

- SCSI Mechanic v3.0 results

The faster drive in the CD format test comes from ASUS (E616). The drive has an average of 5418Kb/s, leaving LiteOn LTD-163 in the second position. Toshiba SD-M1612 comes third with 5254Kb/s. ASUS E616 gave a rather low "Random I/O" result with only 690Kb/s while Toshiba SD-M1612 gave the third best performance with 847Kb/s.

- Pressed CD results: (Press for ASUS E616 and TOSHIBA SD-M1612 CDSpeed results)

In the CD Speed test, ASUS E616 has the highest performance with a 37.17X average reading speed. LiteOn LTD-163 comes second with 36.94X and Toshiba SD-M1612 third with 36.05X.

ASUS E616 has the second highest seek times with a 94ms in "Random" test. Toshiba SD-M1612 comes third with 89ms, while LiteOn LTD-163 holds the first position with 83ms. The ASUS drive in the "1/3" test has the second best result with 100ms and in the "Full Stroke" test the lowest with 143ms.

- CDR Media: (Press for ASUS E616 and TOSHIBA SD-M1612 CDSpeed results)

ASUS E616 holds the first position with CDR media also. The drive's average reading speed was 37.88X. In the second place we find LiteOn LTD-163 and Toshiba SD-M1612 comes forth with 36.83X. Pioneer DVD-106S/2 comes last with 32.81X due to its limited reading speed (40x max).

- HS-RW reading tests (Press for ASUS E616 and TOSHIBA SD-M1612 CDSpeed results)

Toshiba SD-M1612 is the only drive that can read HS-RW media at full 48x (CAV) reading speed. In the second place we find ASUS E616 with 26.93X. Pioneer DVD-106S/2 comes third with 26.64X: