Sony DRU-720A: Speed Increases All Around

Write Time/Quality Test - DVD+R DL 2.4x Media

Dual layer writing capability has made its way into every new optical chipset used in all newer drives. During our 16x roundup in November 2004, Sony's DRU-710A was one of two drives that failed to write to our dual layer test media. We hope that Sony has since fixed this issue with the DRU-720A.

As reported by Sony, the DRU-720A will write at 4x speeds to any certified media rated at 2.4x and it did just that, with the MKM 001 media at least. The drive wrote to the media at an average rate of 4.06x in 26:54 minutes. Surprisingly, the DRU-720A did not perform as well on our Ritek D01 media. The 720A could not kick the speed up past the 2.45x mark and it took 43:54 minutes to complete. From the Nero CD-DVD Speed screenshots, both writes seemed to complete without a hitch.

Again, we scanned the dual layer media for PI errors using our PX-712A.

Hold mouse over for the MKM 001 DVD+R DL image.

The number of PI errors found on the Ritek D01 media was astounding! With the majority of the PI errors on the first layer of the media, the total number came out to be 1838512. With this many PI errors, it is quite possible that this particular written media will be unreadable. The MKM 001 disc had very few PI errors, 54196 total, which occurred mostly on the first layer.

Screenshots of the 2.4x DVD+R DL media read and write processes in Nero CD-DVD Speed as well as scans with PlexTools have been compressed into a downloadable zip file: 24xduallayer.zip