| KHypermedia 8x4x8 DVD+RW IDE Drive - Page 2 of 2 |
Testing:
First off I wanted to make sure Nero�s InfoTool agreed with everything that KHypermedia claimed the drive was capable of. As you can see below, it does...
The following system was used for testing:
� DFI Infinity motherboard
� AMD 35watt 2400+ Mobile XP processor
� 2x Western Digital Raptor 36 gig hard drives in RAID0
� 2x Seagate 120 gig SATA Hard drives in RAID 1
� Lite-On 52x32x52 CD Burner
All data for burning was sourced from the Seagate RAID 1 array.
I purchased the cheapest, most generic looking disks I could possibly find. I figure if a burner can cope with crappy disks then the real nice ones should be easy, right? These disks are called �Great Quality� and boast a 4X DVD+R burn rate. I also picked up a few of the matching DVD+RW disks to see how they do. I also managed to get a hold of an 8X DVD+R to see how times fared at this drives fastest burn speed.
Right off the bat I wanted to see how fast a big chunk of mixed files could be burned. I selected a few CD ISO�s, my entire home photo collection, all of the drag and race videos ever sent to me, and all kinds of MP3�s. I gathered a total of 5,282 files in 420 folders making 4323Mb of data and burned them to a DVD+R at 8x. Or at least attempted to, Nero errored out and I figured I had created my first DVD drink coaster. These cheap disks are only rated for 4x so I backed Nero down to 4x and tried the same disk again. I guess Nero never even attempted to burn, because the disk was fine. 14 minutes and 40 seconds later I had a perfect backup of a huge amount of data. 12.46 minutes later Nero had verified the data burned to the disk as being error free.
Next I burned the same files to a DVD+RW. Almost identical results at 15 Minutes 6 seconds surprised me. I expected The RW function to be somewhat slower. Now its time to see how fast this burner can write the same files to the 8X disk... 7 Minutes 48 seconds, that�s what I call fast.
I ran Nero CD-DVD speed tests on each supported media and the results are below. This drive does right about what it is supposed to. Good times in all categories, but I did notice what seemed like a huge amount of CPU load while running a data DVD.
Below are the results from Sisoft Sandra DVD/CD benchmark testing. Again, good marks throughout, with no big discrepancies.
Through all this testing I noticed that this drive is exceptionally quiet. I have only owned LiteOn optical drives for so many years and have become accustomed to hearing my drives spin up. Not once did I hear this drive.
Conclusion:
The KHypermedia 8X DVD+RW burner pleasantly surprised me. It performed exceptionally with everything I threw at it. So far I have backed up the majority of my data and not one coaster. What more can you ask from a very inexpensive DVD Burner? Computer Geeks sells this drive for an incredible $48.90. For less than $50.00 you get yourself a +RW burner capable of burning at 8X speeds, a nice deal all around and I give the KHypermedia Burner a 4.5 out of 5 stars... "Readily Recommended"!
Final Rating (4.5 out of 5 stars):  
Pros:
� Very fast burn times
� Not a coaster maker
� Packed with Nero Express 6.0
� Price
Cons:
� Minor, but including a blank +R and +RW disk would be nice
Special thanks to Computer Geeks for providing the KHypermedia KHypermedia 8x4x8 DVD+RW IDE Drive to BigBruin.Com for review!
Please drop by the BigBruin.Com forum and feel free to discuss this review!
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