In order to confirm the CD reading specifications for the two drives on test, we used one CD pressed media, a copy on CD-R and one on HS-RW media. The results are illustrated in the following graphs.

- CD Format

LiteOn exhibited more stable performance with all tested media while the LG was the fastest with pressed and US-RW media.

- DVD Format

We repeated the same tests with DVD media this time.

All drives reported similar speeds. The differences can be considered as negligible.

The following DVD is a PTP DVD-ROM where the two layers of the disc are read sequentially with the drive starting the reading process from the inner part of the disc, which is the beginning of each layer, progressing towards the outer range for each layer.

The Asus and LG drives were the fastest with an end speed of just over 12X while the other drives reached just under 8.5X.

The graph shown below, indicates the reading performance of the five drives with OTP dual layer media. The first layer of an OTP dual layer DVD-ROM is read exactly the same way as the first layer of the PTP disc we tested previously. The difference here is the reading strategy of the second layer on the disc. The beginning of the second layer is located in the outer part of the disc, so the drive starts reading from the outer tracks towards the inner part of the disc.

Once again the Asus and LG drives proved to be the fastest.

The two following graphs include the reading performance with recordable and rewritable media.

Here, the Asus with a consistent average reading speed of 7.3X with all media was the fastest, followed close behind by the LiteOn at 6.44X. In fact, all the drives were very consistent with all media. The LG GDR8163B was the slowest at 4.58X.

We ripped the contents of a pressed Double Layer movie to the hard disk using all the drives. The results are given below:

The higher ripping speeds belongs to the Asus and the Toshiba drives.

Only the LG, Toshiba and Samsung drives support DVD-RAM reading. All had an average speed close to 2X.

-Appendix Nero CD-DVD Speed Graphs

LG

• CD Pressed / CD-R / US-RW
• DVD Pressed SL / DVD Pressed DL PTP / DVD Pressed DL OTP / DVD-R / DVD-RW / DVD+R / DVD+RW / DVD-RAM

LiteOn

• CD Pressed / CD-R / US-RW
• DVD Pressed SL / DVD Pressed DL PTP / DVD Pressed DL OTP / DVD-R / DVD-RW / DVD+R / DVD+RW