Toshiba SD-M1912 DVD-ROM Review

CD-ROM TESTS

CD-ROM READ

We next tested the drives ability to handle pressed CD-ROMs.

As you can see from above, the drive managed an average speed of 37.00 speed using CAV and towards the end of the CD it managed 50.35x. It also has very low CPU usage with low seek times. We found it excellent at reading CD-ROMs.

CD-R READ

The average CD-R recordable data reading speed was 36.12 using CAV - if it weren't for the dip you can see it would have read the CD-R disk at 48x max..

CD-RW DATA READ

It reads CD-RW media a little slower and maxs at 32.87 speed - you can see it averaged 24.80x speed.

CD-ROM AUDIO READ

For this test we used a pressed AUDIO-CD and examined the drive's ability to read audio.

The drive performs well in this test with a perfect 10 score and an average 22.46x speed - it reached 29.80x towards the end.

CD-R ADVANCED DAE QUALITY

The drive managed an average speed of 23.19 under this test and it's quality was 100 (perfect), but its offset was a little off with -72 bytes (should be 0).

It can read CD-TEXT and subchannel data but could not read any data from the leadin nor leadout. Its only fast enough for on-the-fly copying at 12x.

CD-R 99Min READING

The Toshiba was excellent at reading 99min CD-Rs and as you can see above it managed an average of 39.68x whilst maxing at 54.32 speed.

C2 ERROR REPORTING

Next we examined the ability of the drive to accurately extract audio information. This is aided by something called C2 error information which is on a CD. If your drive can report C2 information then it will be faster and more accurate at ripping audio. We used Exact Audio Copy 0.95 b5's "Detect Read Features" option to examine what the drive could do:

CloneCD

The drive is compatible with CloneCD as you can see above.

Reading

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

Safedisk 2 Read Speed

I 00:42:43 Starting copy from TOSHIBA DVD-ROM SD-M1912 to J:\IMAGE.ccd
I 00:42:43 Read Speed for Data Tracks: Maximum
I 00:42:43 Read Speed for Audio Tracks: Maximum
I 00:42:43 Read SubChannel Data from Data Tracks: Yes
I 00:42:43 Read SubChannel Data from Audio Tracks: Yes
I 00:42:43 Fast Error Skip: Yes
I 00:42:43 Don't report read errors: No
I 00:42:43 Intelligent Bad Sector Scanner: No
I 00:42:46 CD contains CD-Text: No
I 00:42:46 Reading Track 1... (Blocks 0-335411)
W 00:43:01 If you don't expect read errors on this CD, disable "Fast Error Skip"!
W 00:43:01 Failed to read Sector 881
W 01:48:26 User has cancelled operation!
I 01:48:26 Duration of operation: 01:05:39
I 01:48:26 Average Speed: 5 kBytes/s (0.03)
E 01:48:38 Reading from TOSHIBA DVD-ROM SD-M1912 failed!

Plextor 708A: Average Speed: 3038 kBytes/s (17.27)

Plextor 716A Average Speed: 2623 kBytes/s (14.91)

Toshiba SD-M1612: Average Speed: 4657 kBytes/s (26.46)

Toshiba DVD-ROM SD-M 1912 Average Speed: : 5 kBytes/s (0.03)

This is the worst drive we have tested so far for reading Safedisk 2 protected disks after 3 hours it didn't move from 0% - the older Toshiba DVD-ROM 1612 took only 2 mins and 49 seconds.

LaserLok Read Test

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

I 21:30:32 Starting copy from TOSHIBA DVD-ROM SD-M1912 to K:\IMAGE.ccd
I 21:30:32 Read Speed for Data Tracks: Maximum
I 21:30:32 Read Speed for Audio Tracks: Maximum
I 21:30:32 Read SubChannel Data from Data Tracks: Yes
I 21:30:32 Read SubChannel Data from Audio Tracks: Yes
I 21:30:32 Fast Error Skip: Yes
I 21:30:32 Don't report read errors: No
I 21:30:32 Intelligent Bad Sector Scanner: Yes
I 21:30:35 CD contains CD-Text: No
I 21:30:35 Reading Track 1... (Blocks 0-340206)
W 21:30:49 If you don't expect read errors on this CD, disable "Fast Error Skip"!
W 21:30:49 Failed to read Sector 2090
I 21:55:42 Duration of operation: 00:25:06
I 21:55:42 Average Speed: 530 kBytes/s (3.01)
I 21:55:42 Reading finished!

The Toshiba SD-M 1912 took 25.06 mins which was slightly better, but it must be said that older Toshiba drives could complete both these tests within around 3 mins - things have gotten worse not better under Samsung.

DVD Region Protection

The Toshiba SD-M 1912 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 3 - Last Updated: 6 January 2005