You can find it here: http://www.cdfreaks.com/article/255




Feel free to comment the review in this thread.

Hi
Excellent, especially the conclusion which shows this drive needs to mature.
Thanks Jan70.

Great review!

But one question: Did it came with Nero 6.6.1.3?

I know it's mentioned as being used in the review, but what version came on the CD?

According to the "What's inside the box" it came with:
# NeroExpress 6.6 for Windows 98, 98SE, ME, 2000, XP and 2003 Server
# NeroVision Express 3 & ShowTime 2 for Windows 98SE, ME, 200 and XP

P.S.: I would love to see some scans with the Plextor YUDEN 03 media done @ 12x

I have 50 of them, but I'm not impressed with my bruns at the moment...

Why don't you have a look in the following thread, which contains links to plenty of T03 scans including burns made on NEC 4550 and NEC 4551:

Taiyo Yuden 16x DVD+R (YUDEN000 T03) Batch variation

Thanks!

I've been able to improve a bit on some of your test results, using 107 firmware. Note that these scans are all at 8x.

1st is MKM001 burned at 8x:



Then burned at 6x:



TY G03 burned at 16x:



TY T02 burned at 16x:



TY G02 burned at 12x:



Ricoh R03 burned at 16x is a little marginal in the PIF, but TRT at 16x is smooth:



The R03 burns beautifully at 12x.

MCC 03RG20 results were identical to yours.

Forgive me if this post is poorly placed, but...

Seems to me the review is either misleading or inacurate on a couple things, or else I'm just a noob needing educating.

Some of the DVD-RAM tests are shown using verification, which is selectable in the File -> Options -> Standard Tests (Selected Tests) page of CDSpeed. This is selectable for other media types besides DVD-RAM, and as such would imply that this simply has CDSpeed do a read-after-write type of alternating command sequence. Wouldn't this be redundant for DVD-RAM, since the firmware should automatically do a write verification for DVD-RAM media? Supposedly this is a design advantage DVD-RAM has (among others) over the other media types. Also, CDSpeed uses CDFS when running the "Create Data Disk", which is not how most people will write to DVD-RAM in the wild.

While using native DVD-RAM support under XP is generally easy, many blanks come preformatted to UDF, and XP can't do anything with them until they are erased with a 3rd party utility or until a DVD-RAM (UDF) driver is installed. When I tried using FAT32 (using Windows Quick Format) I obtained very slow write speeds when copying data to the disks. Later using the RAM/UDF driver's Quick Format, I got much faster data write speeds. Read speeds were good in both cases. While the format times were compareable (about 30 sec.) for both filesystems, it would appear that UDF is much more efficient though less portable perhaps (due to the driver requirement). I seem to remember reading somewhere that XP has a habit of verifying reads when using internal filesystem drivers for removable drives, so this may explain the discrepancy I found. This might be a good thing for hard drives, but not for DVD-RAM.

Bottom line: Since DVD-RAM is experiencing an upsurge in interest and usage lately with the new media and drives now becoming widely available, perhaps some added attention to appropriate testing methods is in order.

Well, you might be right if you say that this drive has some flaws, but I have never had problems with any particular media (luck??) AND Labelflash works after flashing a 4551-firmware, which is why I bought it. And, as someone said before, it doesn't really matter to me if it takes 1 min more or less to burn a DVD when I'm using 8x media most of the time anyway....come on, who cares.....

I've had the same slow write speeds when using FAT32. Because of this I use UDF as my primary file system on DVD-RAM.