Sony DRX-S90U Portable 8x DVD Writer

CD Write and ReWrite Tests - Nero Burning Rom 9.4.26.0 and Drag-to-Disc 9.0:

For this test I randomly generated 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. All of the times below include not only the actual writing time, but the lead in and out times too. This gives a more realistic idea of how long it takes to write a CD.

The DRX-S90U has a maximum CD writing speed of 24x. To reach this speed, it uses CAV, or Constant Angular Velocity. With Taiyo Yuden's 52x media, the drive started writing at about 11.41x and reached a maximum speed of 25.68x at the end of the session. This gave the DRX-S90U an average writing speed of about 19.13x.

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

The DRX-S90U took less than five and a half minutes to write an entire 701MB CD. While most of the internal writers we've looked at lately can do this in half the time, this is pretty good for a portable drive.

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-52327S (firmware QS09) and read the discs at 32x. 

HP 52x (CMC)

Moser Baer 52x

Taiyo Yuden 52x

The DRX-S90U'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 Drag-to-Disc from Roxio. Verbatim's 24x Ultra Speed CD-RW media was used for these tests.

While the DRX-S90U uses 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 the drive uses a total of five "zones." The DRX-S90U starts writing at 8x and quickly jumps to 12x at the 6 minute mark. When it reaches the 23 minute mark, the drive changes to 16x and then to 20x at the 46 minute mark. The DRX-S90U writes at this speed until about the 74 minute mark. When it reaches this point, its writing speed increases to 24x and stays there until the end of the session.

Sony's portable DVD writer did fairly well in our rewriting tests. The drive took 4:13 to write 400MB with Nero and 4:45 to do the same with Drag-to-Disc. Erasing wasn't a problem for the DRX-S90U either. In our tests, it took 25 seconds to do a quick erase and 6:10 to fully erase the disc.