Toshiba SD-R5372 Review

DVD Writing Capabilities

For our DVD writing tests we will write to various types of disks including DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD-R DL and measure various aspects of the recording such as the total time taken, the write strategy employed and the average speed.

Certain disks have Parity data which tell the drive how to correct errors. PI errors are normal and can be corrected by a drive but when you have too many the can cause problems as slight defects (scratches, dust, fingerprints etc) may cause a disk to become unreadable.

We are also going to measure the write quality of the disks to see how well they have been written using Plextools 2.19 and its Q-CHECK SUM8 PI/PO test.

Lots of graphs and data can look confusing if all your after is to find out if the drive is any good or not so to simplify things you should remember a few things, the lower the blue lines on the quality graph, the better the disk. Recording faster will often increase the error rates so low speed recorded disks often have good quality. Different drives and disks have different quality so not everything will be the same, but if you have the same disk and drive then you should expect very similar quality at a given speed.

According to the DVD standards the error limits should be below the following:

Parity Inner Errors (PIE) = 280

Parity Inner Failures (PIF) = 4

Parity Outer Failures (POF) = 0

The bold line on the error graph is always positioned at 280 for PIE. Our quality tests were conducted with a Plextor 716A drive.

DVD Writing Performance

BOOKTYPE SETTING

The drive supports automatic booktype setting for DVD+R & DVD+RW & DVD+R DL to DVD-ROM.

DVD+R RECORDING @ 16 SPEED

Manufacturer : Verbatim
Code : MCC 004
Disc Type : DVD+R
Usage : General
Recording Layer : -
Recording Speed : 2.4 X - 16 X

First we tested the write quality to a Verbatim disk at 16x speed. The drive put in a good performance and wrote the disk in 5 mins 27 seconds and the disk quality was excellent (the PI/PO errors did not increase above 12).

DVD+R DUAL LAYER RECORDING @ 4 SPEED

One of the best features of the new drive is the ability to burn up to (8.5GB) onto a single side using dual-layered disks. You can use the extra capacity for data, movies, games etc. The following picture courtesy of Verbatim explains how double / dual layer disks it works:

VERBATIM 5X DUAL LAYER

Manufacturer : Verbatim
Code : MKM 001
Disc Type : DVD+R DL
Usage : General
Recording Layer : -
Recording Speed : 2.4 X - 5 X
Capacity : 7.96 GB
8547993600 Bytes

We used a Verbatim DVD+R Double Layered disk and recorded a project at 5x speed, the result of which can be seen in the Nero screenshot. Our recorded disk finished without any problem giving us a total time of 22 mins and 45 seconds, compare this with the burn of the Plextor 716A which took 26 mins and 37 seconds. The quality of the disk was excellent and can be seen in the plextools quality shot above.

NOTE: Every double layer disk we write failed verification with data errors on the 2nd layer. After 2 months waiting for Toshiba to investigate it appears that our unit was faulty and can not write to the 2nd layer correctly.

DVD+R RECORDING @ 12 SPEED

Manufacturer : YUDEN000 T02
Code : -
Disc Type : DVD+R
Usage : General
Recording Layer : -
Recording Speed : 2.4 X - 12 X

The Toshiba's write quality at 12 speed is excellent and took only 5 mins and 57 seconds which is faster than most 16x speed writers.

DVD+R RECORDING @ 8 SPEED

Manufacturer : RITEK R03
Code : -
Disc Type : DVD+R
Usage : General
Recording Layer : -
Recording Speed : 2.4 X - 8 X

The drives performance with the Traxdata 8x speed "+R" disk wasn't so good although the Pit/Land quality was good the overall PI/PO errors were high.

DVD+R RECORDING @ 4 SPEED

Manufacturer : Ricoh
Code : RICOHJPN R01
Disc Type : DVD+R (Book Type: DVD-ROM)
Usage : General

The disk started off writing at 6.03 x speed and then jumps to 8 speed and continues writing at this speed until the end (averaging 7.81 speed). It used the P-CAV strategy and finished in 8 mins and 01 second. The quality of this disk is also shown and it starts off writing them badly but then manages a good burn with errors peaking towards the end.

DVD-R RECORDING @ 4 SPEED

Manufacturer : RITEKG04
Code : -
Disc Type : DVD-R
Usage : General
Recording Layer : -
Recording Speed : 4 X

It writes to our DVD-R disk at 4.01 speed almost all the way throughout using CLV. It took 15 mins and 17 seconds and the write quality was very good.

RE-WRITEABLE DVDS

DVD+RW RECORDING @ 4 SPEED (2.5 x)

Manufacturer : PHILIPS 041
Code : -
Disc Type : DVD+RW
Usage : General
Recording Layer : -
Recording Speed : 2.5 X

When we tested the drives ability to handle DVD+RW disks with a 4 speed disk it only managed to write it at 2.5 speed and took 22 mins and 44 seconds to complete.

DVD-RW RECORDING @ 2 SPEED

Manufacturer : TDK
Code : TDK502sakuM3
Disc Type : DVD-RW
Usage : General
Recording Layer : -
Recording Speed : 2 X

Next we tried a DVD-RW re-writeable 2 speed disk for the dash "-RW" format, the drive took 29mins and 13 seconds.

Page 6 - Last Updated: 23 January 2005