| 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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