During the review we’ve already seen that the Mitsumi CR-480ATE is truly a great CD-RW reader (see page 4
‘Data Read Tests’‘). However we still need to take a look
at how well the drive can write CD-RW media. To format our CD-RW discs we used Ahead’s InCD (www.ahead.de) version 3.21.0.
CD-RW Tests – Formatting:
We formatted an Infiniti 700MB (!) CD-RW disc with Ahead’s InCD and got a free useable disc space of 572MB. An increase
of about 36MB compared to a normal 650MB CD-RW disc.
Infiniti 700MB CD-RW Disc 4x-10x Certified
Although the used CD-RW disc was certified up to 10x writing we had no problems using it at 12x.
CD-RW Tests – Packet Writing:
Then we measured the time it took the Mitsumi CR-480ATE to write a 411MB (431.036.416 bytes) file to the CD-RW disc with
InCD. The file was copied in roughly 4 minutes and 34 seconds. This was about 1 minute faster than the Waitec MEGALUS which
only has a CD-RW speed of 10x while the Mitsumi uses 12x. The average writing speed of the Mitsumi CR-480ATE was
10.24x
A lot faster than the average writing speeds of the Waitec MEGALUS (7.16x), the Lite-On 24102B (7.23x) and the Plextor
PX-W2410A (7.20x). Please note that the Plextor and Lite-On speeds were reached on different machines so the achieved times
can be a little off.
CD-RW Media – Normal Writing:
Next we used CloneCD to do a Quick Erase to clean the CD-RW disc and used Nero Burning Rom version 5.5.7.2 to write the
same file as a normal data compilation. The disc was recognized as CD-R disc and the write speed was automatically set to
12x. Below a screenshot of the process completed successfully:
As you can see the process was finished in 4 minutes and 40 seconds, about the same results we got with the Packet
Writing Tests above.
CD-RW Media – Conclusion:
Like expected the Mitsumi CR-480ATE outperforms all our previous tested drives because of its high re-write speed of 12x
compared to the 10x the other drives use. We were surprised to see we could use our 10x certified Infiniti 700MB CD-RW discs
without problems at 12x. Again thumbs up for the Mitsumi!
To conclude our review we will take a look at how far the Mitsumi CR-480ATE can overburn and if it can handle 8cm
CD-R’s as claimed…
