I need to test a few drives for their ability to burn at 16X in some external enclosures. I rarely burn at 16X so I want to make sure I am not missing something. I plan to put a burned -R disc in the drive and run a burst test from CDSpeed. When I have done this in the past with drives and enclosures that have been proven to work at certain speeds, the results were consistent.

Short of wasting a lot of discs to test burn in CDSpeed, will my plan work? If not, is there a better idea.

Much thanks.

I'm not sure if it's a good idea, but have you tryied to do a simulation?

Yes a simulation will do the job, but you need to use a DVD-R because DVD+R media doesn't support simulation (except in BenQ test write mode and with PlexTools in Plextor drives).

For some reason my NEC 4551 fails to start a simulation write with CDSpeed, so you might expect the same problem with other NEC drives.

Burst test will tell you something about the capability for burning at 16x but it won't be enough. If the burst test shows you a maximum speed lower than 16x then you obviously won't be able to achieve 16x reading/writing, but even if it tells you that there is enough burst bandwidth (22 MB/s should do it), then it will not necessarily be enough for 16x writing, but 16x reading will probably be OK.

Thanks guys. Unfortunately I don't have any 16X -R media, but if it works the way simulate should, I might be able to make it work anyway.

Quick question; does simulate burn to the disc or can I use the same disc over again for multiple drive tests?

Thanks again.

For what I know simulations don't write on the disc (I did only few simulations, but until now never with latest version of cd-dvd speed). So you can use the same disc for more tests.

You don't need 16x certified DVD-R media, but you do need media that the drive is capable of burning at 16x! Just because you only simulate the burn doesn't mean that you can simulate burning media at otherwise unsupported speeds.

With MCSE or other ways of hacking firmware, you may be able to trick your drive into writing with 16x on lower rated media. Writing quality doesn't matter if you're only simulating.

You can simulate as many times as you want on the same disc.

Thanks, DrageMester. Unfortunately I cannot hack the firmware for all the drives to get TYG02 to go to 16X so I guess I am out of luck. I'll just have to settle for 12X. I guess I should have saved some of the MCC 03RG20 I had last December, but it was so bad I just wanted to get rid of it. Next time Office Max has a $15 sale I guess I will have to buy more. At least my LG drive turned out a decent burn.


If I am willing to burn a 16X +R disc, is there any way to test whether it reaches a true 16X burn when burning a normal copy or do I have to burn withing CDSpeed and "Create Disc"? In other words, If I have some DVD files I want to burn anyway, is there a way to use CDSpeed to test and burn at the same time and get a playable disc? It looks like I can create an image with CloneDVD and then burn it as shown above.

Why don't you use your normal burning program to create an ISO/NRG image, and then burn the ISO image to DVD using CDSpeed's Create Data Disc function?

Not all burning programs can create an ISO or NRG image, but many can.
I have no experience with CloneDVD, however.

Sounds good. I'll give it a try.