The SONY DRU-710A supports 48X CD-R and 24X US-RW recording speeds.

• CD-R Format

The drive supports 8X, 16X (CLV), 24X, 32X and 40X (P-CAV) writing speeds by default. However if you keep the eject button pressed for a while, this will be changed to 48X, a feature which is called Turbo Boost Function. Below are the recording speeds as detected by Nero Burning Rom.

We should mention that it's quite possible, due to the PowerBurn system, for the maximum burning speed to be reduced down to 32X or even 24X. Users can however disable this and get the maximum writing speed. This can be done under Nero Burning Rom->Choose Recorder->Options->Un-check Generic PowerControl Enabled.

Another utility that can be used to check the maximum speed of the inserted media comes from LiteON, (SONY owns LiteON), known as the "SMART-BURN Media Check Program":

According to Nero CDSpeed, the drive reached a maximum of 48.93X. The test started at 21.60X and the average speed was 37.02X. Click on the image below for the complete graph.

• CD-R Recording Times

For the burning tests, we created an 80min data compilation through Nero Burning Rom recording the data on a 700MB disc. The SONY DRU-710A finished the task in 3:19 minutes at the maximum 40X writing speed, three seconds slower than the 832S model.

The writing performance is generaly stable with all inserted media, as our tests showed. The SmartBurn system will lower the writing speed if the media ID code is not listed in the drive's firmware. Below is a chart demonstrating all recording times with various media.

The best performance came with Mam 80min 52X media at 196secs (3:16mins) with SmartBurn disabled, since when enabled, it allowed only 24X for the specific disc. The highest recording time comes with TraxData 80min 52X media at 201secs (3:21mins).

Although the recordings were finished successully at 48X, as the Nero screenshot above reveals, we consider that the time needed for each recording is increased for thi speed, where normally CD writing at 48X needs well under 3 minutes ( ~2:45min).

- Other features

Overburning writing	Up to 99min
CD text reading/writing	Yes

• CD-RW Format

The SONY DRU-710A supports the 16X CLV, 24X Z-CLV rewriting speeds, with Ultra Speed Rewritable Media (US-RW). The drive also writes at 4X CLV with NS CD-RW and 10X CLV with HS-RW discs.

Below you can see the Nero CD-DVD Speed writing simulation test with blank 24X US-RW media from Mitsubishi Chemicals.

The drive starts the writing task at 15.97X and reaches the maximum 24X (23.99X) after the 13:00 min address mark on the disc. According to CDSpeed, the average writing speed is 22.43X.

We also used Nero Burning Rom in order to burn a data disc with 24X US-RW media from MCC. The data compilation we burned had a size of 651 MB and the duration of the recording process was 3:44 minutes.

- CD-RW Mount Rainier Tests

The drive does not support this feature.