Toshiba TS-H652D Review

CD WRITING TESTS

CD-R Media Writing Tests

The TS-H652D DVD writer, offers CD reading and writing and its CD capabilities are: 48 speed writing (CDRs) / 32x speed re-writing / 40x speed CD reading.

The Toshiba TS-H652D 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 and 8x (the LG also offers a 4x speed option).

Our first disk was an unbranded 52X Ritek disk, it managed to write it in 2 mins 49 seconds using CAV at 48x speed.

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 35 seconds to do a FULL erase on an 80 min CD-RW at 32 speed (ignore the time remaining it is wrong).

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

Re-writing on our Verbatim CD-RW 32x disk took just 3 mins 22 seconds using ZCLV writing strategy.

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 a max disc 100min disk.

Writing

We wrote a data disk using NERO after changing the option to allow overburning to 100mins :

The Toshiba TS-H652D had no problems writing it to disk (providing you use the right kind of media, 99min cdrs not 90mins or 80plus cdrs).

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 on and Fast Error Skip was turned on so as to compare it with the other drives.

Safedisk 2 Read Speed

I 22:24:46 Starting copy from TSSTcorp CD/DVDW TS-H652D to L:\ss2-tosh652d.ccd
I 22:24:46 Read Speed for Data Tracks: Maximum
I 22:24:46 Read Speed for Audio Tracks: 16x
I 22:24:46 Read SubChannel Data from Data Tracks: Yes
I 22:24:46 Read SubChannel Data from Audio Tracks: Yes
I 22:24:46 Fast Error Skip: Yes
I 22:24:46 Don't report read errors: No
I 22:24:46 Intelligent Bad Sector Scanner: Yes
I 22:24:46 CD contains CD-Text: No
I 22:24:46 Reading Track 1... (Blocks 0-335411)
W 22:24:50 If you don't expect read errors on this CD, disable "Fast Error Skip"!
..
I 22:32:46 Duration of operation: 00:08:00
I 22:32:46 Average Speed: 1639 kBytes/s (9.32)
I 22:32:46 Reading finished!

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

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

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

The Toshiba TS-H652D Safedisk 2 read performance is nothing special it read the entire disk in 8 mins at 9.32x speed but it is still faster than the LG GSA H12N.

SAFEDISK 2 / EFM Writing

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 as no drive has managed to pass) and sd290 writers being rare. The following tests were the results of the Toshiba TS-H652D drive:

According to the sheep test, the TS-H652D is TWO SHEEP BURNER+SD290 - which is a very good result as not many drives can write the "sd290" file.

LaserLok Read Test

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

I 23:16:22 Starting copy from TSSTcorp CD/DVDW TS-H652D to L:\laserlok-toshiba.ccd
I 23:16:22 Read Speed for Data Tracks: Maximum
I 23:16:22 Read Speed for Audio Tracks: 16x
I 23:16:22 Read SubChannel Data from Data Tracks: Yes
I 23:16:22 Read SubChannel Data from Audio Tracks: Yes
I 23:16:22 Fast Error Skip: Yes
I 23:16:22 Don't report read errors: No
I 23:16:22 Intelligent Bad Sector Scanner: Yes
I 23:16:22 CD contains CD-Text: No
I 23:16:22 Reading Track 1... (Blocks 0-340206)
W 23:16:24 If you don't expect read errors on this CD, disable "Fast Error Skip"!
...
I 23:37:46 Duration of operation: 00:21:24
I 23:37:46 Average Speed: 621 kBytes/s (3.53)
I 23:37:46 Reading finished!

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

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

The Toshiba's Laserlok performance was not great but we couldnt say it wasn't bad either, its overall reading ability was bareable and only needed 21mins 24 seconds at 3.53 speed. Here both drives came in with very similar times.

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 TS H652D 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