Protected Disc Tests

- Reading Tests

To create the image of the various protected titles to the hard disk, we used Alcohol 120% software and the appropriate settings, according to the protection type of the inserted discs. Below you can see the duration of each process as well as the transfer rate in each case.

The LaCie d2 DL drive was very fast with the PSX disc (Lybcrypt). Sony 's drive proved to be a lot faster than the LaCie drive when it comes to SafeDisc v2 discs however. When SecuROM v2 disc was used, LaCie's performance was only slightly slower than Sony 's. However, all discs were read successfully, regardless of the ripping speed.

- Writing Tests

The LaCie d2 DL drive supports the DAO-RAW writing mode. For checking the drive's EFM correction status, we used 5 different game titles with different SafeDisc 2 versions having the latest software patches installed. After making the images of the various titles onto the hard disk, we burned them (at maximum speed) with Alcohol 120% v1.9.2.1705. Two different discs were created for each title; one with the "Bypass EFM error" enabled and one more with the function disabled.

• Fifa 2004 - Safe Disc v3.1x
• The Sims Superstar - Safe Disc v2.9x
• The Sims Unleashed - Safe Disc v2.8x
• Serious Sam Second Encounter - Safe Disc v2.51.021
• Max Payne - Safe Disc v2.51.020

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

The LaCie d2 DL drive doesn`t produce working backups with the newest v2.8x, v2.9x and v3.1x builds. Partially working backups were produced for SafeDisc version v2.51.051 & v2.51.020. We observed exactly the same behaviour with the NEC ND-2510A drive. This is something we were expecting to see, since the ability to read/rip protected discs is chipset dependent.