Info & Diagnostic Utilities

Nero Info Tool and DVDINFOPro helped us to reveal the basic technical characteristics of the drives. You can see the results in the screenshots below:

• ASUS DRW-0402P/D [DVDINFOPro], [Nero Info Tool];
• ASUS DRW-0804P [DVDINFOPro], [Nero Info Tool];
• Pioneer DVR-107D [DVDINFOPro], [Nero Info Tool];
• Sony DW-U14A [DVDINFOPro], [Nero Info Tool];
• Sony DW-U18A [DVDINFOPro], [Nero Info Tool];
• TEAC DV-W58G [DVDINFOPro], [Nero Info Tool].

First of all, I’d like to note that all the drives support the RPC II region-dependent protection system. In order to bypass this protection, you may search the Internet or jump right to the popular site www.rpc1.com to find firmware and utilities to switch the drive into the RPC I status. It is especially simple and effortless with DVD-burners originally manufactured by LITE-ON.

You run a special utility in Windows and select the Disable menu item. After that you can enjoy DVD discs from any region of this world.

The result is shown in the above screenshot made in Nero Info Tool with the Sony DW-U18A. All the drives reported support of C2 error correction, but we will see afterwards that it’s not all simple with C2 errors.

Performance

WinBench 99

We tested the drives in CD WinBench 99 using an original disc and two copies made on CD-R and CD-RW discs. The following table contains the results:

• ASUS DRW-0402P/D [CD-ROM], [CD-R], [CD-RW];
• ASUS DRW-0804P [CD-ROM], [CD-R], [CD-RW];
• Pioneer DVR-107D [CD-ROM], [CD-R], [CD-RW];
• Sony DW-U14A [CD-ROM], [CD-R], [CD-RW];
• Sony DW-U18A [CD-ROM], [CD-R], [CD-RW];
• TEAC DV-W58G [CD-ROM], [CD-R], [CD-RW].

The above graphs show that the Sony DW-U18A stumbled on the original disc, slowing down on the last stretch. The rest of the drives had no problems whatever, only showing different speeds. According to CD-ROM WinMark score, the TEAC DV-W58G is the fastest, being the best with two types of media out of three. The Sony DW-U18A is just a little slower. The Sony DW-U14A takes the third position with a noticeable lag. The remaining three models fell behind farther, although two of them have a declared read speed of 40x.

The TEAC DV-W58G happens to have the lowest access time, and the Sony DW-U18A is just a little worse than that. The Sony DW-U14A is the worst in this respect, while the two ASUS drives and the Pioneer again show very similar results.