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Page 2 - CD Quality Tests

Regular Testing

	CD-RW #1 - 1st Burn @32x:
	The first burner used for testing these 32x CD-RW discs is the Plextor Premium. As you can see, the C1 error levels from this test are very high! Especially when compared to what we normally would expect from CD-R media. Although it is normal for CD-RWs to not be quite as good quality as CD-R media, I don't consider *THIS* much of a difference to be normal. Let's see how this media reacts to being written over several more times.

	CD-RW #1 - 2nd Burn @32x:
	CD-RW #1 - 3rd Burn @32x:
	CD-RW #1 - 4th Burn @32x:
	CD-RW #1 - 5th Burn @32x:
	Between each burn, I alternated doing both full and quick erases of the CD-RW disc, and as you can see, there was no significant change where quality is concerned. This is both a good and a bad thing, because the burn quality isn't that great to begin with, and it would be nice if by doing a full erase we could attain a higher quality burn level... but on the other hand, at least there are no negative side effects from only doing a quick erase! Now lets see how this media reacts to cascade testing!

Cascade Testing

	CD-RW #2 - Cascade - 1st Burn @32x:
	For those of you who do not know what "cascade testing" is, it is a rigorous style of quality testing used for various re-writable media. It involves writing a small amount of data on a re-writable medium, and then writing over that data with a larger amount, and then writing over that data with even more. This process continues until the disc is burned to its' maximum capacity. By the time the disc is full, the first portion of the disc will have been burned many more times then the last portion of the disc, which will have only been burned once. This kind of testing is much harder on the media, and low quality re-writables will not perform well at all under these circumstances. For this testing, I have chosen increments of 130MBs (15min) per burn, which means that by the 5th burn, all 650MB (74min) of space will be filled. Let's see how these discs perform!

	CD-RW #1 - Cascade - 2nd Burn @32x:
	CD-RW #1 - Cascade - 3rd Burn @32x:
	CD-RW #1 - Cascade - 4th Burn @32x:
	CD-RW #1 - Cascade - 5th Burn @32x:
	As you can see from the above scans, although the results themselves are not that great, we can quickly see that the final scan (where the entire disc has been burned) looks *VERY* similar to the scans done on this media type when it was burned and re-burned under regular circumstances. This says to me that this media is well designed, but poorly supported by this burner.

	CD-RW #2 - Cascade - 6th Burn @32x:
	I decided to re-write the second disc one more time, to see how the scan would look after each portion of the disc has been burned at least twice. As you can see, it almost exactly mirrors the last four scans I did of the first disc (at the top of this page). Under these circumstances, I would consider the cascade testing a complete success, although I think the media could be *MUCH* better supported!