Testbed and Methods

To test our optical drive we used the following software tools and utilities:

• Nero CD-DVD Speed version 4.04;
• Nero Info Tool version 3.01;
• Nero Burning ROM version 6.6.0.16;
• Nic Wilson DVDINFOPro version 4.22;
• Ziff Davis Media CD WinBench 99 version 1.1.1.

Our test platform was configured as follows:

• Intel Bonanza D875PBZ mainboard;
• Intel Pentium 4 2.8GHz CPU;
• IBM DTLA-307015 15GB HDD;
• GeForce2 MX400 64MB graphics card;
• 512MB RAM;
• Microsoft Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 1 and DirectX 9.0b.

The drive was connected to the mainboard USB port. We didn’t have any problem connecting the drive via any of the available interfaces. However, we decided to continue our testing session via the USB 2.0 port, because it is the most widely spread interface in the today’s computer systems. The drive read CD discs at the maximum possible speed of 48x.

As it always happens in case we examine external solutions, we ran a little fewer tests, because Nero CD DAE and Exact Audio Copy utilities didn’t recognize the device as part of the system. We tested the drive “as is”, i.e. just the way any of you will get it from the store.