Mysteries Of The CDRW and Back Ups Revealed

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Test System Configuration

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Test System
MotherboardAsus P4T-E - Intel 850 Chipset
CPUPentium 4a 1.6 GHz - Northwood Core - Retail Box
Memory2 - 256 MB PC800 Rambus - Samsung
Graphics CardNVidia GeForce4 4600ti - 128 MB
Hard DrivesIBM - IC35L040AVER07 - 41 GB - ATA-100 - 7200 RPMWestern Digital - WD800JB - 80 GB - ATA-100 - 7200 RPM
Sound CardTurtle Beach Santa Cruz Sound Card
Network Card3Com 3C905C-TX-M NIC
DVD PlayerAsus DVD-616 - 16X DVD / 48X CD-ROM
CaseAntec SX-1000 Mid-Tower Case
Power SupplyEnermax EG365P-VE Power Supply
OSMicrosoft Windows XP Professional - All Patches & Updates Applied
MediaTDK High Speed CDRW Media Used For CDRW TestsVerbatim Super AZO 24X CDR Media used for all CDR Tests

The Challenge Revealed More Than We Hoped For !

In order to challenge our four writers, we selected four original commercial CDs to use in our testing. As you can see in the picture below, we covered the titles on the discs. This was done to satisfy the software publishers, since we would have expected some of them to complain if we revealed the entire disc. This compromise should keep everyone happy. We will refer to the original test discs as disc 1, disc 2, disc 3, and disc 4. Here is a breakdown of the copy protection schemes used on each of our test discs.

  • Disc 1 - Safedisc 2 - Game
  • Disc 2 - Safedisc 2.51 - Game
  • Disc 3 - TAGES - Game
  • Disc 4 - Cactus Data Shield - Audio CD

We used Post-It notes to indicate which disc was which. We also wanted to cover up the majority of the name on each disc. We did not show the full disc because some companies have lawyers who don’t like such things. At any rate, by looking at the picture, we think that you’ll get the idea.

To determine whether using CloneCD or Blindread/ Blindwrite would make a difference, we tested with each of them.