Plextor Premium, how to disable PoweRec?

[Halc]

How can I disable PoweRec for good on Plextor Premium?

I have PlexTools Pro installed, but even if I tick the Drive settings / Advanced / Disable PoweRec checkbox, the drive still burns using PoweRec and slows down the burning on most discs.

Is anybody else having similar problems disabling PoweRec?

I want to disable it, because I want to burn too fast on a media that can't handle it (on Premium), causing a hard to read burn with lots of errors on it.

regards,
Halcyon

[Ian]

What software are you using to burn the CD?

[Halc]

I used PlexTools Pro. I thought it would work, because that app contains the "Disable PoweRec" feature.

Should I try something else?

regards,
Halcyon

[dodecahedron]

why don't you try Nero?

[Halc]

Ok, I tried it with Nero Burning Rom and it works. I was able to burn a disc at 52x in 3:09 (Nero reported actual burn speed at 52x).

Thanks for the tip. I hadn't noticed Nero allower turning off PoweRec.

What's funny is that I burned the same data on a Traxdata 40x spindle bulk (Ritek) twice using Nero.

The first burn was with PoweRec at 24x and has bad C2 erros towards the end.

The second burn was with PoweRec at 52x and has very low C1 max (good average also) and no C2.

While this could be very well a single anomaly, I think it's quite confusing for an ordinary user nevertheless. Not to mention amusing :)

That's not how PoweRec should work (burn slower and with worse quality) :)

cheers,
Halcyon

[cfitz]

You aren't the first to notice the seemingly perverse phenomenon of lower C1/C2 error rates at higher burning speeds. Many have reported such results for various media on various drives, including rdgrimes and me. It isn't universal, but it isn't really rare either. It seems that with newer drives the manufacturers have optimized for burning at higher speeds, which sometimes comes at the expense of burning at lower speeds.

cfitz

[Halc]

cfitz,

yes, I had noticed and read about many tests (ever since EMediaPro wrote about it) that show how not always the lower speed produces better results.

I don't think there is a lot of surprise in this on it's own, based on what we know about laser calibration needed for different speeds and how dyes are optimized for various speeds.

However, the fact that a drive that uses the disc power calibration area to self-determine the optimum write speed for maximum quality... now I think it is a little bit ridiculous that the results can be so off the base :)

I think it's one thing to manually select a too low write speed (compared to the CD-R speed rating) and get worse results, but even more hilarious that when you write significantly faster (more than twice the speed) on a disc compared to what the drive's self-calibration would have chosen that you end up with less errors.

If I would get similar results on a lot of different dyes/strategies/discs, it would lead me to conclude that PoweRec is nothing, but a marketing gimmick and probably only contains a random algorithm for seleting the drive write speed :)

This has already been covered already in various threads and I'm sure I've missed it, but I do find it a little funny and misleading at the same time :)

Cheers,
halcyon

[cfitz]

I think it's one thing to manually select a too low write speed (compared to the CD-R speed rating) and get worse results, but even more hilarious that when you write significantly faster (more than twice the speed) on a disc compared to what the drive's self-calibration would have chosen that you end up with less errors.

That actually describes my personal experience. I bought a small batch of Mitsui 24x media about a year just to see if it lived up to its hype and was worth its incredible expense (no and no, it turns out). With SMART-BURN enabled on my LTR-48246S it burns at 24x and gives a lot of errors towards the end of the disc. With SMART-BURN disabled I burn it at 40x with much lower errors.

The strangest thing of all is that there was one firmware version a number of releases back that burned the media at 40x with SMART-BURN enabled. I thought, "Great! Lite-On has recognized that this media burns better at higher speeds and has adjusted accordingly." Unfortunately, with the next release of firmware SMART-BURN knocked it back down to 24x again. Go figure...

cfitz