Performance in CD WinBench 99

We traditionally start out by checking the performance of the drive in the synthetic benchmark WinBench 99.

The new ASUS drive cannot match its “desktop” counterparts in speed: internal drives have a two or even three times better score here. This is not only due to the smaller speed formula of the ASUS SDRW-0804P-D, but also to its rather high access time of 164ms (slowest internal drives have an access time of 130ms or something). On the other hand, the ASUS is still fast enough for performing everyday tasks, and it is just incorrect to compare it with “desktop” drives. They just belong to two completely different categories of hardware. So, let’s better get closer to more important things, namely to the quality of the written discs. But first here’s another test of speed of the ASUS SDRW-0804P-D, this time using a CD-R disc recorded at the max burn speed:

The average seek time as calculated by this test does not differ much from the results of desktop drives, contrary to what we have seen in WinBench 99. 127 milliseconds is a good result, considering the class of the device (some models from TDK and Lite-On have a higher seek time). Talking about the ergonomic qualities of the device, the full disc recognition time is a good 15.5 seconds. This is comparable to the most leisurely desktop drives, but is a good speed for a portable optical drive. The burst data-transfer rate of 15MB/s is a consequence of the interface employed during the test, namely USB 2.0.