LG GSA-H12N Review

CD WRITING TESTS

CD-R Media Writing Test

The LG GSA-H12N offers very similar CD-Rs write speeds to the Toshiba LG GSA H12N, you can see below you can choose to write a CD-R disk at: 48x, 32x, 24x, 16x, 8x and 4X (it can also write disks at the slower 4x speed, which the Toshiba doesn't offer).

Manufacturer : Verbatim (52x)
Code : 97m34s23f
Disc Type : CD-R
Usage : General
Recording Layer : Dye Type 3: Long Strategy (Cyanine, AZO)

The above was our first test and we used a Verbatim 52X CD-R - it took 3 mins and 14secs.

CD-RW Media Writing Test

We next tested the drive's ability to erase CD-Rewriteable media in both, full erase and quick erase mode. We also ran a CDRW full write test.

Quick Erase

In the quick erase test, the drive took 29 seconds.

Full Erase

The drive took 3 mins and 34 seconds to erase our Ultra-Speed 80 min CD-RW at 32 speed.

CD-RW DATA Re-Write Test VERBATIM @ 32 SPEED

The LG GSA-H12N puts in our fastest time re-write time: 3 mins 16 seconds, eraseable speed options are 32x, 24x and 16x.

99MIN CD-RECORDING

For our 99min CD overburning test we used Nero and burnt the disk using DAO/96 and changing the expert features overburn settings . This test demands two things: approved media and a drive that's capable of overburning in DAO mode - the disk approved for 99min burning we used was a max disc 100min CD-R

Writing

We wrote the data using Nero:

While the drive can read 99 min cdrs without effort it failed to write to our 100min CD-Rs. We think it could work with minor firmware tweaks.

CloneCD

It is reporting that the drive can write DAO-RAW / DAO-SAO and should be compatible with Clonecd.

Reading

We checked the read performance with some popular Safedisk 2 protected games: MaxPayne & Serious Sam: 2nd Encounter. Intelligent Bad Sector scanner was turned off and Fast Error Skip was turned on so as to compare it with the other drives.

With I.B.S. on and fast error skip on and the drive took 21 mins:

Safedisk 2 Read Speed

I 22:38:14 Starting copy from HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-H12N to L:\ss2-lg.ccd
I 22:38:14 Read Speed for Data Tracks: Maximum
I 22:38:14 Read Speed for Audio Tracks: 16x
I 22:38:14 Read SubChannel Data from Data Tracks: Yes
I 22:38:14 Read SubChannel Data from Audio Tracks: Yes
I 22:38:14 Fast Error Skip: Yes
I 22:38:14 Don't report read errors: No
I 22:38:14 Intelligent Bad Sector Scanner: Yes
W 22:38:14 HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-H12N does not support current Fast Error Skip settings!
W 22:38:14 Changed error correction mode to Hardware Error Correction.
I 22:38:14 CD contains CD-Text: No
I 22:38:14 Reading Track 1... (Blocks 0-335411)
W 22:38:15 If you don't expect read errors on this CD, disable "Fast Error Skip"!

I 22:50:18 Duration of operation: 00:12:04
I 22:50:18 Average Speed: 1087 kBytes/s (6.18)
I 22:50:18 Reading finished!

Toshiba TS-H652D Average Speed: 1639 kBytes/s (9.32)

LG GSA-H12N Average Speed: 1087 kBytes/s (6.18)

The LG GSA-H12N Safedisk 2 read performance was good but not the best we have seen, it is beaten by the Toshiba TS-H652D.

SAFEDISK 2 / EFM Writing

We tested if the drive can handle correct EFM encoding.

SHEEP TEST

We used the sheep test found here to test how good the burner was at writing protections.

The sheep test is a test to see how good a DVD writer is at reading and writing weak sectors as used in various protection schemes. The test writes various weak and bad sectors in mode 1 onto a CD, similar to how game protection systems work. Few drives can write all the tests, with no drive currently on the market that can write/read the sheep_3 file (some say the sheep3 test is unreliable) and sd290 writers being rare. The following were the results of the LG H12N drive:

According to the sheep test the LG-H12N is a TWO SHEEP burner.

LaserLok Read Test

We tested the drive's ability to read a Laserlok protected CD using an Original Desperados:

I 22:53:16 Starting copy from HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-H12N to L:\laserlok-lg.ccd
I 22:53:16 Read Speed for Data Tracks: Maximum
I 22:53:16 Read Speed for Audio Tracks: 16x
I 22:53:16 Read SubChannel Data from Data Tracks: Yes
I 22:53:16 Read SubChannel Data from Audio Tracks: Yes
I 22:53:16 Fast Error Skip: Yes
I 22:53:16 Don't report read errors: No
I 22:53:16 Intelligent Bad Sector Scanner: Yes
I 22:53:16 CD contains CD-Text: No
I 22:53:16 Reading Track 1... (Blocks 0-340206)
W 22:53:18 If you don't expect read errors on this CD, disable "Fast Error Skip"!
..
I 23:14:45 Duration of operation: 00:21:29
I 23:14:45 Average Speed: 619 kBytes/s (3.52)
I 23:14:45 Reading finished!

Toshiba TS-H652D Average Speed: 621 kBytes/s (3.53)

LG GSA-H12N Average Speed: 619 kBytes/s (3.52)

The GSA-H12N took 21 mins 29 secs @ 3.52 speed to read our Laserlok disk. Not a good performance and almost identical to the Toshiba's time.

Region Protection

As part of their licensing deal most new DVD-ROM drives are region protected and will only playback a DVD movie title from a certain region. We checked to see if the GSA-H12N had region protection:

The LG GSA-H12N is RPC-II region protected (RPC-2 devices allow you to change the drive's region a certain number of times before the drive becomes permanently locked).

Page 4 - Last Updated: 15 January 2007