Toshiba SD-R5372 Review

CD WRITING TESTS

The Toshiba 5372 is also a CD Writer offering the capabilities of a 48/24/48 CD writer.

The following CD media were used in our CD-R tests:

• Verbatim 52x CDR
• Ritek Co. 52x CDR (supplied with drive)

Toshiba CD-R Media Writing Test

The Toshiba SD-R5372 offers a good selection of write speeds below you can see we can choose to write a disk at the following speeds: 48x, 40x, 32x, 24x, 16x, 8x.

Manufacturer : Verbatim
Code : 97m34s23f
Disc Type : CD-R
Usage : General
Recording Layer : Dye Type 3: Long Strategy (Cyanine, AZO)
Recording Speed : n/a
Capacity : 79:59.73

Our first test based on the included Ritek disk failed as it caused too much vibrations. But we tried again and the result above was the re-test using a Verbatim 52X CD-R (under the CREATE DATA DISK test of CD-Speed. The drive returned a good result and wrote at 48 speed taking only 2 mins 43 seconds.

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 38 seconds.

Full Erase

The drive took 4 mins and 51 seconds to erase an 80 min CD-RW at 24 speed. This is relatively a long time since the Plextor 716A only took 4 mins 2 seconds.

CD-RW DATA Write Test

The Toshiba DVD writer offers us more rewriting speeds than most writers with 12x, 16x, 24x speeds available to use. We used CDSpeeds' built in "create data disk" function to fill the disk and wrote at 24x speed. Our test took 4 mins and 31 secs - we can see the reason why it takes so long is because it uses Z-CLV strategy for writing.

99MIN CD-RECORDING

For our 99min CD overburning test we used CD speed's overburn function. 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 an Infiniti 99min 32 X speed disk.

As you can see above the Toshiba SD-R5372 only supports 99min CD-Rs writing up to94.57 mins at 8x speed.

Writing

We wrote the data using DiskJuggler:

As expected it failed and wouldn't even allow 94mins to be written.

CloneCD

CloneCD is reporting the drive supports RAW-DAO and RAW-SAO modes.

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.

The test CDs we tried took 24mins using I.B.S off and fast error skip turned off. We also tried with I.B.S. on and fast error skip on and the drives performance was better:

Safedisk 2 Read Speed

I 00:48:25 Starting copy from TOSHIBA CD/DVDW SD-R5372 to L:\ss2.ccd
I 00:48:25 Read Speed for Data Tracks: Maximum
I 00:48:25 Read Speed for Audio Tracks: Maximum
I 00:48:25 Read SubChannel Data from Data Tracks: Yes
I 00:48:25 Read SubChannel Data from Audio Tracks: Yes
I 00:48:25 Fast Error Skip: Yes
I 00:48:25 Don't report read errors: No
I 00:48:25 Intelligent Bad Sector Scanner: Yes
I 00:48:25 CD contains CD-Text: No
I 00:48:25 Reading Track 1... (Blocks 0-335411)
W 00:48:27 If you don't expect read errors on this CD, disable "Fast Error Skip"!
I 00:50:50 Duration of operation: 00:02:25
I 00:50:50 Average Speed: 5428 kBytes/s (30.84)
I 00:50:50 Reading finished!

Philips DVDRW228k: Average Speed: 756 kBytes/s (4.30)

Pioneer A05: Average Speed: 251 kBytes/s (1.43)

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

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

Toshiba SD-R5372 Average Speed: 5428 kBytes/s (30.84)

The Toshiba 5372A's Safedisk 2 read performance is the best we have seen in any DVD-ROM / DVD Writer (even beating the excellent 1612/1712 Toshiba DVD-ROMs) - it read the entire disk in only 2mins and 25 seconds.

SAFEDISK 2 Writing

We tested if the drive can handle correct EFM encoding with CloneCD by writing Serious Sam 2nd Encounter (which is protected with Safedisk 2.51):

AWS OFF: Copy works!

The disk worked in our DVD-ROM & DVD Writer (hidden ATIP) and we didn't need to enable the Amplify Weak Sectors option of CloneCD - the Toshiba SDR5372 DVD burner is 100% compatible with CloneCD.

SHEEP TEST

We used the sheep test found here to test how good the burner was at writing protections, only the following were read back correctly:

• sd2old
• sd251

The test writes various weak and bad sectors in mode 1 onto a CDRW, similar to how game protection systems work. According to the sheep test it can only backup up to Safedisk 2.51 (we are not sure how accurate this test and will have to verify it in the future.)

LaserLok Read Test

We tested the drive's ability to read a Laserlok protected CD using an Original Desperados. This is a very difficult test for most drives:

I 01:35:42 Starting copy from TOSHIBA CD/DVDW SD-R5372 to L:\laserlok.ccd
I 01:35:42 Read Speed for Data Tracks: Maximum
I 01:35:42 Read Speed for Audio Tracks: Maximum
I 01:35:42 Read SubChannel Data from Data Tracks: Yes
I 01:35:42 Read SubChannel Data from Audio Tracks: Yes
I 01:35:42 Fast Error Skip: Yes
I 01:35:42 Don't report read errors: No
I 01:35:42 Intelligent Bad Sector Scanner: Yes
I 01:35:42 CD contains CD-Text: No
I 01:35:42 Reading Track 1... (Blocks 0-340206)
W 01:35:47 If you don't expect read errors on this CD, disable "Fast Error Skip"!

...

I 01:51:01 Duration of operation: 00:15:19
I 01:51:01 Average Speed: 868 kBytes/s (4.94)
I 01:51:01 Reading finished!

Another excellent result for the drive, it was a little slow at first but managed to speed up and finished reading the disk in only 15mins and 19 seconds - another record!

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.

The Toshiba SDR5372 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: 23 January 2005