CDR Tests

The TDK Vortex 121032 drive supports 12x writing among with the "JustLink" anti-coaster technology. We used the CD Speed 99 build-in writing speed test which confimed the 12x writing speed (12.02x average):

- Procedure: We tested TDK Vortex 121032 with Nero v5.5.1.1, CloneCD v3.0.0.9, Padus DJ v3.00.780 software and with the following media: Verbatim 74min (16x) & 80min (16x), Mitsui 74min (16x), Prodisc 80min (16x) (red bottom) and with TDK/Plextor/Verbatim 74min HS RW. We didn't saw any particular problems with the various tested CD-R.

- CD-R Tests:
We created "DataCD" job with data slight higher than 74mins (74:03:65). We burned the same job with all 4 CDR-W drives:

As you can see, there are differences between the four (4) tested drives. TDK Vortex 121032 holds the lowest writing time as the following drive Ricoh MP7125A is about 5 secs slower. In this test PX-W1210A is surprisingly out of the race (with 416secs). The CPU Usage is very good although it is 0.5% lower than the second best performer, Ricoh MP7125A.

- 80min CDs:
As with the previous test, we created a DataCD (80:02:16) and used the same media for all burns:

TDK Vortex 121032 and Ricoh MP7125A drives gave the lower burning time in this test. Plexwriter and Acer are 6 to 9 secs slower.

- Overburning Tests:
We used 90 and 99min CDs (from Medea International and Copy4All) and using Nero we were able to write up to 89minutes. The TDK Vortex 121032v however doesn't seem to like 99min CDs at all since all overburning tests with CD Speed 99 and Feurio failed (even if we tried max time 89mins). The 90min media could be written entirely.

- AudioCD Tests:
We created several Audio CDs (including CD-Text). All of the CDs we created were tested with the Plextor PX-40TS and Plextor's CD-Text compatible CD player. From what we saw, everything worked just fine.

- CloneCD Tests:
The TDK Vortex 121032 supports both DAO and SAO-RAW writing modes according to the CloneCD v3.0.0.9. Our tests results confirmed that the drive works with DAO- RAW.

Something noticeable is that the CloneCD doesn't recognize that the drive supports simulation writing. We guess that CloneCD author will support the new Vortex model soon...

SD2 Support:
For the SD2 test we used the "No One Lives For Ever" CD title. We used TDK Vortex 121032 both as reader/writer. The produced backup didn't play using the same driver or any drive we tried to test so we could say that TDK Vortex 121032 cannot support SafeDisk 2 protected media.

- Buffer Underrun tests:
The TDK Vortex 121032 supports "JustLink" anti-coaster technology. During our tests "JustLink" worked very good even if while the testing computer worked at full CPU/HD load. The gap lenght of the JustLink technology is under 2micro meters, which is lower than the BURN-Proof technology in terms of absolute numbers.

Verdict of CDR Results:
The TDK Vortex 121032 worked very well in our writing tests. The drive burned without any complaints all the inserted media. The recording times are the best in the internal competition and very close to those the Ricoh MP7125A has given. The drive supports overburning up to 89minutes and doesn't work at all with 99min CDs.The "JustLink" technology is there and works very well against buffer underrun problems. Finally, the CloneCD users will find the adoption of DAO-RAW writing feature very useful for the backup of their CDs. :)