Web Hosting by Netfirms | Free Domain Names by Netfirms

Conclusion

Personal Opinions:

This media is very odd! The quality is very inconsistent, and there seems to be no way to predict what speeds will work best with these discs. I have to say, these Sony discs baffle me! I've never seen test results that jumped back and forth so much. To illustrate my point, I have made two graphs, one graph for the high speed tests, and one for the low speed tests. The testing results graphs can be found below in the technically speaking section of this conclusion. Technically Speaking: Technically Speaking, these discs are potentially hazardous to your data, due to their inconsistent burning quality. In most circumstances you will likely end up with a poor quality burn, but in some cases you may end up with 1 or more unreadable files! Let's take a look at how these discs performed: As you can see, the results of the low speed testing are fairly misleading. You would never guess that the discs burned at both 40x and 32x in fact had C2 errors, and in the case of the disc burned at 32x, there was even a file that was unreadable! Remember however that the low speed test is an indicator of how the media would react if you were only reading the disc at 8x, and should be considered the "in case of emergency, this disc will perform like this" test. This time we see results that better indicate how these discs will perform under "regular use" conditions. As you can see, two writing speeds stick out for poor quality: 40x, and 8x. Oddly enough, the 32x writing quality looks much better on this graph then what it really worked out to, especially when you consider it was the only test that resulted in a file being unreadable. The only speeds that appear to give good results are 24x and 16x, but judging from the inconsistencies of this media, I am hesitant to believe that this will be a recurring situation. The Score: Due to the incredibly inconsistent nature of this media type, I give these discs a 4/10. I would have given these discs a better mark if they could have shown some level of consistency, but as it stands I can't recommend these discs! Should you find yourself using this media type, I heavily recommend running Nero ScanDisc on each disc after you burn them, so as to not run the risk of losing your important data. If you have access to a LiteON drive, pick up a copy of CD Doctor or K-Probe from the www.cdrinfo.com webpage and use them.

Sincerely, The Digital Dolphin