It's a little hard to comment on this for a few reasons,

1) The link CDR give seems to be dead although they do quote Alex Noe being the source for their sheep test files. Plus they don't seem to go into any detail about it.

2) I don't have the drive, nor does Kip now so a retest can't be redone. Any one else out there have it????

3) Not the author of the files so I don't know if in some circumstances you could get a false positive result.

I will attempt to find out more.

No one else has it?

The explanation here might be alot simpler than you think. I for one believe that they aren't doing the 3 sheep tests at all, (even tho it's advertised on the reviews) for several reasons:

1. Ian, the resident CDRLabs pseudo-guru, tends to denounce and play down the importance of 3 sheep testing on just about every occasion he's asked about it, in face of the fact that alot of the internet population games and makes backup copies of older disks.

2. The comments regarding Alex Noe's weak sector utility are copied-pasted from one article to the next with just the drive names changing.

3. Ian seems to be completely oblivious to the fact that there are actually 3 sheep burners out there, having seemed to have reached his own conclusions about the world at large based on his own priorities rather than other user's priorities. In other words the whole affair smacks of him having made assumptions rather than presenting evidence from exact testing.

The conclusion here for myself is that, if I want a burner that has 3sheep correct efm encoding, then that's my business and not Ians. His claims that 3sheep status is of no use because newer protections don't need it, (besides being false) seem to be nothing less than a way to avoid rigorous testing. Cop out, in other words.

Bottom line is that I'd be wary of reviews/testing at CDRLabs.

Although I don't know if your comments about Ian are right, I still hope someone with a Asus DRW-1814BLT can comfirm it's a 3-sheep burner or not of course.

I don't know if you are interested in other 3 sheep burners, but here is one:

http://www.cdfreaks.com/reviews/LG-G...ced-Tests.html

This review is worthless!

this is what they said: The LG GSA-H42N is a “Three Sheep Burner” that can successfully write Safedisc up to V2.51.

They say it can't backup SD2.90 but they also say it's a 3-sheep burner ............. that's just not right.

I have this drive ASUS 1814blt made aug 8-2007 it had 1.13 firmware.
I tryed the 1.13 (NOT 3 Sheep) and 1.10 firmware (NOT 3 Sheep) and could not pass the 3 sheep test. tryed it on writeable and rewriteable disk in mode 1. The disk would not copy from the 1814blt or the sd-1502 and a few more drives to the desktop .I tryed it in xp and vista and was using nero 8.1.1.0

It would copy in nero using mode 2 and also using microsoft's burning program which also uses mode2 for burning (most burners will burn 3 sheep test in mode 2 )Mode 2 does NOT= 3sheep burner

For Me THIS is NOT a 3 sheep burner!!!!

Update:from above
back to using firmware 1.13
This drive, Asus DRW-1814BLT did pass the (sheep _3_AUDIO) test, it is also a sheep3.dat file but is 528MB. It is a 3 sheep audio burner. It was copied from 1814blt and sd-m1502 and sohd-167t to the desktop.

The (sheep_3) test is a sheep3.dat file but is 460MB, burned in mode 1. I have spent 5 hours and still will not pass this test.

The two files have the same name (sheep3.dat) but are a different size
460mb vs. 528MB and different test.

It did pass the sd251 and sd290 test also.

(sheep _3_Mode2xa) sheep3_mode2xa.dat is also a 460mb file. I burned it in mode2xa and it did not pass

well
this disscusion is on fire
i have the drive and i tested it for 3 sheep and it turns NOT a 3 sheep burner
but it is proven to be a good drive making a lot of high quality DVD's on unlikely brands
i have had 3 generations of asus dvd wirters and they all preform well but not free from some a bug every now and then but for a Value VS money it's pretty nice
FOR THE RECORED:
i have recently updated the firmware into 1.14 and it effectely and noticably improved burning quality specially on DVD+R (i use Imation-CMC MAG,GigaMaX-Vebatim,TDK-Ritek, BenQ-RItek, LG) media