Sony DRU-720A: Speed Increases All Around

Write Time/Quality Test - DVD+/-R 8x Media

Though 16x speeds are coming in at full force from drive manufacturers, many end users who do not have a time constraint still choose to purchase more affordable 8x media to use with their drives. We have tested Ritek R03 and Philips C08 8x media with the DRU-720A.

Write times for each of the two 8x +R media were identical at 8:50 compared to write times of 8:13 (Philips C08) and 8:16 (Ritek R03) on the DRU-710A. The 720A took 11 seconds longer to complete the Ritek G05 DVD-R media. Let's see how the DRU-720A performed in quality as we read these discs back with PlexTools.

We noticed that, compared to the DRU-710A, the 720A took much longer to reach 8x writing speed with both of the 8x media. The 710A hit 8x just inside the 0.5GB mark while the newer 720A reached 8x speeds around the 1.1GB mark, which explains the increase in write time.

PlexTools shows 126020 PI errors on the Ritek R03 media while the Philips C08 media scan shows an amazingly low 21280 PI errors, which were also evenly spread out across the disc, basically eliminating any chance of uncorrectable areas. PlexTools came up with 254234 PI errors while scanning the Ritek G05 disc.

Hold mouse over for the Philips C08 image.

Screenshots of the 8x media read and write processes in Nero CD-DVD Speed as well as scans with PlexTools have been compressed into a downloadable zip file: 8xdvd.zip