SONY DRU-530A DVD±RW recorder - Page 12

DVD Recording Tests

- Writing Performance

The SONY DRU-530A supports DVD-R/RW and DVD+R/RW writing. The maximum supported speed for DVD+R is 8x (4x~8x Z-CLV), 4x CLV for DVD-R, 4x CLV for DVD+RW and 2x CLV for DVD-RW media.

Currently, only a few 8x certified DVD+R media are available on the market. The supported 8x DVD+R media which we tested came from Mitsubishi Chemicals, Taiyo Yuden and CMC Magnetics.

8x DVD+R

An 8x DVD+R disc from Mitsubishi-Kagaku was used to check the 8x writing strategy of the drive. The software used was Nero CDSpeed, and its "create disc" function.

The drive supports speeds of 8x Z-CLV, 4x and 2.4x for DVD+R media. It started the writing at 4.02x, maintaining this speed until the 1250MB address mark on the disc, where the drive steps up to 8x writing for the rest of the recording (hence Z-CLV). The average speed is 6.88x.

Following are the same tests with DVD-R, DVD+RW and DVD-RW media. Supported writing speeds for each type are 4x and 1x for DVD-R, 4x and 2.4x for DVD+RW, and 2x and 1x for DVD-RW.

4x DVD-R

4x DVD+RW

2x DVD-RW

- Burning Tests

The best recording times are illustrated in the following table after burning 4315MB of data on various DVD±R, DVD±RW media, using the maximum allowed writing speed for each disc. For comparison, we also include the writing times for the Optorite DD0401 and LiteOn DRW-811S drives.

All the drives had very good times and there was very little between them. Only with DVD+R media is there a difference where the LiteOn drive is noticeably faster. With all other media, the difference in times is negligible.

The following screen shots were taken from Nero, after successful burnings. The amount of data is the same for all the tests.

• Mitshubishi Chemicals 8x DVD+R

• Mitshubishi Chemicals 4x DVD-R

• Mitshubishi Chemicals 4x DVD+RW

• TDK 2x DVD-RW

The table above presents the writing speeds, media name and media code for the various discs used.

- Packet Writing Tests

For this test we copied a 403 MB file (412.822 KB) from the hard disk (on the same PC as the recorder) to the formatted RW media through Windows explorer (drag and drop).