A
Arno Wagner
I have done some quality assessment of two DVD-RAM capable
DVD-burners with four different DVD-RAM brands. As there may be
public interest, find my results and conclusions below.
Note that DVD-RAM do all use the same meterial and disk
characteristics (supposedly), not the dye-madness used in
DVD+/-R. This means the results should not depend (too much) on
the burner firmware.
Test setup:
Software: Nero DiscSpeed 4.11.2.0
(Free download from http://www.cdspeed2000.com/) kprobe
2.5.2 (Free download from http://www.k-probe.com/)
Nero 7 Essentials OEM Suite 3: InCD
Drive 1: Lite On LH20A1S Firmware 9L08 Drive 2: Samsung SH-S203P,
Firmware SB00
(Shows up as TSSTCorp CDDVDW SH-S203P, seems Samsung uses
"TSSTCorp" on all their drives.)
Disks:
1. (v1 - v5) 5 pack Verbatim "3x DVD-RAM", Typ 4, Verbatim
#43449
MID: M01J3004 Manufacturer: Matsushita
2. (f1 - f5) 5 pack Fuji Film "DVD-RAM 3x", Typ 4
MID: M01J3003 Manufacturer: Matsushita
3. (m1 - m5) 5 pack Maxell "DVD-RAM Data" 5x,
"HGX Stamper Technology", Type 4 MID: MXL16 Manufacturer:
Maxell?
4. (i1 - i5) 5 pack Imation "DVD-RAM4.7", Type 2 (removable
cartridge)
MID: ? Manufacturer: Optodisk Techn. Corp.
Procedure: 1. Write test image with "Create Disk" on Lite On drive
2. Assess disk quality with "Disk Quality" on
both drives (DiskSpeed on Lite ON, kprobe on Samsung)
3. Repeat with Samsung drive
Writing and reading was done with the maximum media speed (3x or 5x).
I did a few tests with 1x, but did not find significant differences.
Resuls:
Numbers are PIF (PI Failure, > 15 does indicate possible
unrecoverable errors). L = Lite On burner, S = Samsung burner
'F' = failure during write:
| Verbatim | FujiFilm | Maxell
-----------------------------------------------------
L | F/ F/ F/97/83 | 13/28/24/10/15 | 4/ 3/ 5/ 7/ 8
S | 4/ 2/ F/15/ 3 | 3/ 2/ 4/ 4/ 8 | 3/ 2/ 2/ 2/ 2
| Imation
------------------
L | 14/23/ F/11/13
S | 4/ 5/ 3/ 4/ 2
PIF for crossover. The stated drive was used to read, writing was
done with the other drive. '-' indicates write failure in the other
drive, 'R' indicates read failure:
| Verbatim | FujiFilm | Maxell
----------------------------------------------------
L | 14/14/ -/99/91 | 4/71/40/ 7/15 | 25/20/ 4/12/ 7
S | -/ -/ -/11/16 | 13/68/18/18/ R | 3/ 2/ 6/12/ 5
| Imation
------------------
L | 5/51/ 7/ 8/ 3
S | R/14/ -/ 16/ R
Conclusions:
Verbatim: These disks are incredibly bad. There is a problematic
area on each, upwards of the 3.5GB capacity mark. Before
that, they are fine, but filling the disks past this mark
with data is incredibly slow or leads to write errors that
abort the write process. While the Samsung drive manages to
stay below PIF 15 even with some of these disks, it slows
down to a crawl in the bad areas.
Fuji: Better than the Verbatim, despite the same manufacturer.
Maxell: Excellent results for all 5 disks with both drives,
and that at the more demanding 5x speed. Good product.
Imation: Comparable to FujiFilm. Note that these
are Type 2 disks, that you have to remove from their
cartridge. You will also need to get a CD "Jewel Case"
for each one.
Recomendation:
The only consistently good disks are the Maxell ones. While
I do not like marketing speak, the "HGX Stamper Technology"
may actually be significantly better than what the competition
uses. The Maxell disks are available in 3x as well, which also use
"HGX" technology and may aor may not be of equal quality.
If you cannot get Maxell, get Imation or FujiFilm (but see
below). I strongly advise to test each disk (even Maxell) and
to not trust those with a PIF above 15. Note that the disks
are stamped and not vendor preformatted, so a disk quality test
without a complete overwrite will give very bad results and does
not represent disc quality. (Note: Nero Disk Speed overwrites
with ISO filesystem, you will need an UDF filesystem formatting
tool to make the disks usable as HDD-like removable media again
after the tests.)
As for Verbatim, these disks are completely unacceptable.
Looking at the error plot, they all have serious problems in the
area between 3.5GB and the disk end, which strongly indicates
shoddy manufacturing. With the FujiFilm disks having the same
manufacturer, it seems possible that you may also get the barely
acceptable Fuji disks in a Verbatim package or that you get the
broken Verbatim disks branded as FujiFilm.
All in all a pretty sad state of affairs, when the "high
reliability" DVD-RAM media actually fulfills these expectations
for one out of three manufacturers and one out of four brands. In
addition only one of two drives has good read/write results.
I cannot long-term viability. However a medium with lower PIF
will have less marginal areas and should preserve the data on
it significantly longer given the same ageing characteristics,
when compared to a high-PIF media.
Drives:
A few words for the drives. The Samsung writes a bit faster (10%)
and is significantly more quiet. It deals much better with the
problametic disks and generally reads and writes DVD-RAM better
than the Lite On drive. The disks got notably less warm in the
Samsung drive.
One drawback is that it does not work with the Quality Test of
Nero DiscSpeed. Interestingly KProbe v2.5.2 can scan DVD-RAM disks
for PI/PIF values with the Samsung drive and Nero InCD 5.5.3.0,
but cannot determine the medium size. (Note: My Samsung drive
came with an earlier InCD version and KProbe did _not_ work with
it. The InCD version I use is form a Nero 7 Essentials suite 3
my PC shop sold me with the LiteOn burner.) The results I got in
several triel runs were the same as with DVDInfoPro, and KProbe is
free. The trick to get it to work is to set the disk size manually.
Setting LBA end to 222120h seems to do the trick. This is also the
raw size you can query with the ATER/ADER test (of which I have
no idea what it does). Note that Nero DriveSpeed can write a test
image, even if it cannot test it afterwards on the Samsung drive.
I have the retail version of the Samsung drive, which includes
an SATA cable, screws and Nero 7.0 "Express/Essentials", which
is a dumbed-down version of Nero 7.0. Two peoblems I had with it
are that is only seems to detect the first drive (a DVD-ROM in
my case) when used with DiscSpeed (or the included CDDVDSpeed)
and KProbe. It needs to cleanup utility from the Nero website
for uninstallation. Not recommended, get some other software for
the Samsung drive.
The Lite On drive seems barely acceptable, as it has significantly
higher disk error rates, both for disks it wrote itself and
ones the Samsung drive wrote. The latter indicates lower
compatibility. In addition the Lite On drive has significantly
higher error rates towards the end of the disk, a behaviour I did
not observe with the Samsung drive. This was also the main source
of errors for the Samsung-written disks. It is possible that this
increased error rate towards the end is due to the disks getting
very warm in the Lite On drive. It is also possible that the
Lite On drive damages disks. I have had two disks (not in the test
results above) that were perfectly fine in the Samsung drive. Afer
one overwrite with the Lite One drive both had problems.
I would not recomend the Lite On drive for DVD-RAM usage, while
the Samsung drive is a very good match for DVD-RAM. If you are
primarily interest is not in DVD-RAM, you need do look elsewere
for an assessment of the two drives.
Arno
DVD-burners with four different DVD-RAM brands. As there may be
public interest, find my results and conclusions below.
Note that DVD-RAM do all use the same meterial and disk
characteristics (supposedly), not the dye-madness used in
DVD+/-R. This means the results should not depend (too much) on
the burner firmware.
Test setup:
Software: Nero DiscSpeed 4.11.2.0
(Free download from http://www.cdspeed2000.com/) kprobe
2.5.2 (Free download from http://www.k-probe.com/)
Nero 7 Essentials OEM Suite 3: InCD
Drive 1: Lite On LH20A1S Firmware 9L08 Drive 2: Samsung SH-S203P,
Firmware SB00
(Shows up as TSSTCorp CDDVDW SH-S203P, seems Samsung uses
"TSSTCorp" on all their drives.)
Disks:
1. (v1 - v5) 5 pack Verbatim "3x DVD-RAM", Typ 4, Verbatim
#43449
MID: M01J3004 Manufacturer: Matsushita
2. (f1 - f5) 5 pack Fuji Film "DVD-RAM 3x", Typ 4
MID: M01J3003 Manufacturer: Matsushita
3. (m1 - m5) 5 pack Maxell "DVD-RAM Data" 5x,
"HGX Stamper Technology", Type 4 MID: MXL16 Manufacturer:
Maxell?
4. (i1 - i5) 5 pack Imation "DVD-RAM4.7", Type 2 (removable
cartridge)
MID: ? Manufacturer: Optodisk Techn. Corp.
Procedure: 1. Write test image with "Create Disk" on Lite On drive
2. Assess disk quality with "Disk Quality" on
both drives (DiskSpeed on Lite ON, kprobe on Samsung)
3. Repeat with Samsung drive
Writing and reading was done with the maximum media speed (3x or 5x).
I did a few tests with 1x, but did not find significant differences.
Resuls:
Numbers are PIF (PI Failure, > 15 does indicate possible
unrecoverable errors). L = Lite On burner, S = Samsung burner
'F' = failure during write:
| Verbatim | FujiFilm | Maxell
-----------------------------------------------------
L | F/ F/ F/97/83 | 13/28/24/10/15 | 4/ 3/ 5/ 7/ 8
S | 4/ 2/ F/15/ 3 | 3/ 2/ 4/ 4/ 8 | 3/ 2/ 2/ 2/ 2
| Imation
------------------
L | 14/23/ F/11/13
S | 4/ 5/ 3/ 4/ 2
PIF for crossover. The stated drive was used to read, writing was
done with the other drive. '-' indicates write failure in the other
drive, 'R' indicates read failure:
| Verbatim | FujiFilm | Maxell
----------------------------------------------------
L | 14/14/ -/99/91 | 4/71/40/ 7/15 | 25/20/ 4/12/ 7
S | -/ -/ -/11/16 | 13/68/18/18/ R | 3/ 2/ 6/12/ 5
| Imation
------------------
L | 5/51/ 7/ 8/ 3
S | R/14/ -/ 16/ R
Conclusions:
Verbatim: These disks are incredibly bad. There is a problematic
area on each, upwards of the 3.5GB capacity mark. Before
that, they are fine, but filling the disks past this mark
with data is incredibly slow or leads to write errors that
abort the write process. While the Samsung drive manages to
stay below PIF 15 even with some of these disks, it slows
down to a crawl in the bad areas.
Fuji: Better than the Verbatim, despite the same manufacturer.
Maxell: Excellent results for all 5 disks with both drives,
and that at the more demanding 5x speed. Good product.
Imation: Comparable to FujiFilm. Note that these
are Type 2 disks, that you have to remove from their
cartridge. You will also need to get a CD "Jewel Case"
for each one.
Recomendation:
The only consistently good disks are the Maxell ones. While
I do not like marketing speak, the "HGX Stamper Technology"
may actually be significantly better than what the competition
uses. The Maxell disks are available in 3x as well, which also use
"HGX" technology and may aor may not be of equal quality.
If you cannot get Maxell, get Imation or FujiFilm (but see
below). I strongly advise to test each disk (even Maxell) and
to not trust those with a PIF above 15. Note that the disks
are stamped and not vendor preformatted, so a disk quality test
without a complete overwrite will give very bad results and does
not represent disc quality. (Note: Nero Disk Speed overwrites
with ISO filesystem, you will need an UDF filesystem formatting
tool to make the disks usable as HDD-like removable media again
after the tests.)
As for Verbatim, these disks are completely unacceptable.
Looking at the error plot, they all have serious problems in the
area between 3.5GB and the disk end, which strongly indicates
shoddy manufacturing. With the FujiFilm disks having the same
manufacturer, it seems possible that you may also get the barely
acceptable Fuji disks in a Verbatim package or that you get the
broken Verbatim disks branded as FujiFilm.
All in all a pretty sad state of affairs, when the "high
reliability" DVD-RAM media actually fulfills these expectations
for one out of three manufacturers and one out of four brands. In
addition only one of two drives has good read/write results.
I cannot long-term viability. However a medium with lower PIF
will have less marginal areas and should preserve the data on
it significantly longer given the same ageing characteristics,
when compared to a high-PIF media.
Drives:
A few words for the drives. The Samsung writes a bit faster (10%)
and is significantly more quiet. It deals much better with the
problametic disks and generally reads and writes DVD-RAM better
than the Lite On drive. The disks got notably less warm in the
Samsung drive.
One drawback is that it does not work with the Quality Test of
Nero DiscSpeed. Interestingly KProbe v2.5.2 can scan DVD-RAM disks
for PI/PIF values with the Samsung drive and Nero InCD 5.5.3.0,
but cannot determine the medium size. (Note: My Samsung drive
came with an earlier InCD version and KProbe did _not_ work with
it. The InCD version I use is form a Nero 7 Essentials suite 3
my PC shop sold me with the LiteOn burner.) The results I got in
several triel runs were the same as with DVDInfoPro, and KProbe is
free. The trick to get it to work is to set the disk size manually.
Setting LBA end to 222120h seems to do the trick. This is also the
raw size you can query with the ATER/ADER test (of which I have
no idea what it does). Note that Nero DriveSpeed can write a test
image, even if it cannot test it afterwards on the Samsung drive.
I have the retail version of the Samsung drive, which includes
an SATA cable, screws and Nero 7.0 "Express/Essentials", which
is a dumbed-down version of Nero 7.0. Two peoblems I had with it
are that is only seems to detect the first drive (a DVD-ROM in
my case) when used with DiscSpeed (or the included CDDVDSpeed)
and KProbe. It needs to cleanup utility from the Nero website
for uninstallation. Not recommended, get some other software for
the Samsung drive.
The Lite On drive seems barely acceptable, as it has significantly
higher disk error rates, both for disks it wrote itself and
ones the Samsung drive wrote. The latter indicates lower
compatibility. In addition the Lite On drive has significantly
higher error rates towards the end of the disk, a behaviour I did
not observe with the Samsung drive. This was also the main source
of errors for the Samsung-written disks. It is possible that this
increased error rate towards the end is due to the disks getting
very warm in the Lite On drive. It is also possible that the
Lite On drive damages disks. I have had two disks (not in the test
results above) that were perfectly fine in the Samsung drive. Afer
one overwrite with the Lite One drive both had problems.
I would not recomend the Lite On drive for DVD-RAM usage, while
the Samsung drive is a very good match for DVD-RAM. If you are
primarily interest is not in DVD-RAM, you need do look elsewere
for an assessment of the two drives.
Arno