I'm amazed by the LG GCC-4480B... (48x24x48x16x combo)

[Phoenix '97]

A friend of mine got this drive recently and I decided to play with it a little...
First I got some crappy Memorex 10x CD-RW media (CMC Magnetics manufacturer) and tried to write at 10x with it with my older 16x10x40x CD-RW drive... put this into my Lite-On 166S DVD-ROM, ran K-Probe, and got a average C1 error rate of about 3.4. This drive really doesn't like these discs, it does have problems reading them back. Next I tried the same files on the same disc with my Toshiba SD-R5002. A bit better, 0.7 error rate. I did the same thing again with the LG combo drive. I got about 7 C1 errors in an entire 14 minute block. Very good! Is it time to retire my old 16x10x40x?

Next, I tried reading some DVD media in it. The Princo DVD-Rs that my other two DVD-ROM drives were struggling with (LG, Lite-On 16x) were read just fine in this drive.

Makes me want to get one for my own!

[Stoner]

The same quality can be said about Lite-On's combo drive.

Either the Lite-On 166S is very accurate in reading all the C2s, or the Toshiba and LG are overwhelmed by all the C2s, thus leaving them out, giving you the wrong impression...

[Phoenix '97]

Hmm, I'm not sure if I was too clear on what I said... I recorded the disc at 10x with the Toshiba, LG, and LG combo, and read all three cases back on the Lite-On, giving the following errors:

LG - 3.4 (Nov. '01)
Toshiba - 0.7 (Dec. '02)
LG combo - 0.0 (June '03)

Does this suggest that newer drives give a higher quality recording on the same -RW disc? The purchase date of the drives is in brackets above.

[cfitz]

DVD-ROM drives like the 166S should not be used for conducting CD-R C1/C2 quality tests using KProbe. KProbe does not give accurate results when testing CD-Rs on DVD-ROM drives. Your results have no meaning, and no conclusions should be drawn from them. Try testing on a Lite-On CD-RW drive using KProbe.

cfitz

[dodecahedron]

and apparently similar things apply to CDRW/DVDROM combo drives...unreliable/inaccurate at testing with KProbe.

[TheWizard]

Try checking the results with Nero CD Speed's ScanDisc then I can add them to the Media Compatibility List.

Oh, best to run ScanDisc on the same drive that the CD-RW disc was burned in.