Lite-On DH-4B1S 4x Blu-ray Disc Triple Writer

CD Write and ReWrite Tests - Nero Burning Rom 7.11.10.0 andDLA 5.20:

For this test I randomly generated 650MB and 700MB of files and directories to test the time it takes the drive to write and close a CD. All of the files are between 1MB and 25MB in size and no more than 10 directories deep.

The DH-4B1S has a maximum CD writing speed of 40x. To reach this speed, it uses CAV, or Constant Angular Velocity. With Taiyo Yuden's 52x media, the drive started writing at about 17.57x and reached a maximum speed of 40.74x at the end of the session. This gave Lite-On's new drive an average writing speed of about 27.18x.

To test the drive's writing times, I wrote our test data to some Taiyo Yuden media rated at 52x. The results are below.

Lite-On's new drive did fairly well in our CD writing tests. While not as fast as the GGW-H20L, the DH-4B1S was able to write an entire 701MB CD in 3:34.

To test the drive's writing quality I used Lite-On IT's KProbe2. Written by Karr Wang, this utility can be used to test the number of C1 and C2 errors on a disc. For these tests I used a Lite-On LTR-52246S (firmware 6S0F) and read the discs at 32x.

Imation 52x (MBI)

Taiyo Yuden 52x

Verbatim 52x

The DH-41BS's writing quality was very good. By looking at the KProbe screenshots, you can see that the discs burned by the drive had a low number of C1 errors. More importantly, there were no C2 errors at all.

For the rewriting tests I created 400MB of files on the hard drive and wrote them in DAO mode using Nero. To test the packet writing speeds I copied and pasted the same files off the hard drive onto a CD-RW disc using DLA from Sonic. Verbatim's 24x Ultra Speed CD-RW media was used for these tests.

While the DH-4B1S uses P-CAV when writing to CD-R discs, it uses Z-CLV, or Zone CLV, when rewriting at 24x. By looking at the screenshot above, you can see that it uses a total of three "zones" to reach its maximum writing speed. The drive starts writing at 10x and jumps to 16x at the 4 minute mark.The DH-4B1S writes at this speed until about the 46 minute mark. When it reaches this point, its writing speed increases to 24x and stays there until the end of the session.

Lite-On's new Blu-ray drive didn't do as well as some of the others in our rewriting tests. Due to its Z-CLV writing method, the DH-41BS took 3:35 to write 400MB with Nero and 3:23 to do the same with DLA.

The DH-41BS also erases at 24x. While its Z-CLV writing method didn't have much of an effect on its quick erase time, the drive took 5:46 to do a full erase.