To test the Plextor PX-B320SA I will be using the Opti Drive Control version 1.30. It’s a combination of PlexTools and Nero CD-DVD Speed. The following system was used for testing:

Control

• CPU: Intel C2D Q6600 (G0 SLACR L731B434) @ 2.71GHz

• MB: Asus P5E3-Dlx Wifi-AP Edition
• GPU: Sapphire HD 4850 X2 Catalyst
• RAM: Aeneon 2×2GB XTune DDR3-1600 (AXH860UD20-16H) @ 1800MHz 10-10-10-30 1T
• PSU: Cooler Master Real Power Pro 850W
• CPU Cooling: Thermalright HR-01 w/ 120mm Antec Tri-Cool Fan
• PWM/NB/SB Cooling: Stock/Stock/Stock
• HDD: Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 80GB 7200RPM 8MB Cache (ST3808110AS)
• OS: Windows Vista x64

Blank Media

• The Recruit Blu-ray Dual Layer Disc

• Verbatim 16X DVD-R (MCC 03RG20)
• Memorex 48X CDR (97m32s19f)

Blu-ray

Let’s start with the Blu-ray results. The max is 8X on single layer BD-ROM and BR-R/RE. Every movie you’ll purchase will likely be a dual layer disc and as such I’m hitting a bottleneck of 4X with this drive. On the first layer we hit 4X at the end with a steady RPM. Throughout the second layer the RPM drops. The seek times are in the mid 200ms with a full stroke of 352ms.

We can look at the disc info and the disc quality but the results don’t mean too much for a pressed retail disc.

DVD-R

The next piece of media we’ll look at is drive performance with a typical DVD-R; in my case I have a Verbatim 16X DVD-R on hand.

The tracking errors (TE) and focus errors (FE) on the disc I used:

I created the test disc and as predicted we reach the maximum speed for both the disc and drive of 16x right at the end. It looked to be a pretty perfect burn with no bumps or hiccups along the way. The average buffer stayed at 98% and we hit a maximum CPU usage of 3%, averaging 0%. This means the drive takes very little CPU cycles to transfer data. After the test disc creation, I verified the data and it was a perfect burn.

The Transfer test was also reached the maximum speed of 16X at the end with only a small hiccup at the 4.2GB mark. The average speed was 11.42x and access times were under 150ms with a full stroke of only 222ms. Much like data creation, the transfer took negligible CPU cycles.

CD-R

The last piece of media we’ll look at is with a plain CD-R. These are pretty out-dated but every so often they come in handy for backing up small amounts of data. The disc I have is an 80 minute Memorex 16X CD-R.

During the test date creation, top speed was achieved at 74 minutes, the end point for common (and very old) CDs. The average speed was just over 35x and we again made no dent to the buffer or CPU usage. Data verification showed another perfect burn.

The reported average, start and end transfer rates are a out of sync with the graph as we clearly reached the top speed of 48x at the same 74 minute mark. My bet is that the average was in the range of 35x like the write results. Access times were less than 400ms with a full stroke of 780ms.

One of the features advertised by Plextor is the PlexERASE, the secure erase software as part of PlexUtilities. The quick erase overwrites data at the lead in area, the table of contents of the disc, whereas the full erase writes data over the entire disc. A quick confirmation gives PlexUtilties the ability to write over all the information. There’s no follow-up prompt indicating that the job is done, a feature I would have liked to be included.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5