FREECOM Fx-50 DVD+/-RW - Page 6

- Reading Tests

To create an image of the various protected titles onto a hard disk, we used CloneCD v.4.3.2.2 software and the appropriate settings, depending on the protection type of the inserted discs. Below are summarized the capabilities of the Freecom drive, according to CloneCD software. As you can see the drive supports writing of CD+G under RAW DAO:

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

Game Title	Protection Scheme
PSX "NBA Jam Extreme"	Lybcrypt
Serious Sam The Second Encounter v1.07	SafeDisc v.2.60.052
Fifa 2004	SafeDisc v3.10
VRally II	SecuROM v.2

PSX Pressed Media

SafeDisc v.2

SecuROM v.2

The Freecom drive proved to be faster than the other two drives in the ripping process of the PSX game and the safedisc2 protected disc while Mitsumi was the slowest. Mitsumi was faster than the other two ripping VRally 2 where the Freecom drive needed 2:33min.

- Writing Tests

The Freecom drive supports the DAO-RAW writing mode. For checking the drive's EFM correction status, we used 4 different game titles with different SafeDisc 2 versions with the latest software patches installed. After making the images of the various titles to the hard disk, we burned them (maximum speed) with CloneCD. Two different discs were created for each title; one with the "Amplify Weak Sectors" enabled and one more with the function disabled.

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

Drive	Game Title	SD2 Build	Settings
			Amplify Weak Sectors On	Amplify Weak Sectors Off
Freecom FX-50	Max Payne	v2.51.020	Yes	Yes
	Serious Sam - The Second Encounter v1.07	v.2.60.052	Yes	Yes
	The Sims Unleashed	v.2.8	Yes*	No
	The Sims Superstar	v2.9	Yes*	No
	Fifa 2004	v3.1	No	No

The drive had a strange behavior in this test. It managed to make working backups of SafeDisc protection up to version v.2.9. However the backups of v.2.8 and v.2.9 were not playable in the same drive but in others such as Teac CD-540E.