Speedy DVD Burns – Part 2: Gotta Burn Fast

In the previous segment , I examined scanning speeds for a few of my DVD writers that could perform quality scanning. While we didn’t exactly decide that deviating from 4x CLV scanning was a good idea, we did at least see some evidence that scans up to 8x CAV may not deviate so much and that slower is not necessarily better, but everything is somewhat drive-dependent as well. In this section, I continue this experiment from 2024 with the meat of the experiment – to see whether drives got better at burning at high speeds and whether 16x (and faster) burns could be done safely, contrary to the wisdom to either keep it at half-rated speed or 4x. Drives For this round-up, I used the three media indicated in Part 1 (CMC MAG M01, MCC 004 and RITEK F16). To burn these discs, I tested the following drives: Optiarc (HP) AD-7250H5 Lite-On DH16A6L Lite-On DH16AFSH Asus DRW-24D5MT Pioneer DVR-108 Pioneer DVR-111L BenQ DW1640 BenQ DW1650 LG GH24NSB0 LG (HP) GH40L LG (HP) GH60L Lite-On iHAS624 A NEC ND-3500AG Samsung SH-224DB TSST (HP) TS-H653R Many of these drives were HP OEM pulls (as noted by “HP” in the name), while some of the drives are a bit on the older side (ND-3500AG, DVR-108, DVR-111L, DW1640, DW1650 are all from the IDE era). Unfortunately, due to their age, the drives are likely to suffer some performance anomalies. Specifically, the DVR-108 is pretty “dead” and locked-up during burn for most of the attempts, the ND-3500AG didn’t put out stellar results either, while the DW1640 drive which doubles as my scanner often has singular short dips in the TRT that do not represent a defect (most likely, indicating issues with the sled “sticking” during advancing). Regardless, they represent the first few generations of 16x-capable DVD burner so they have been included. For the later generation of burners, some of the drives in the list are 24x-era drives that represent the “pinnacle” of DVD writing, but specific mention goes out to the SH-224DB (and its cousin, the…