Samsung Writemaster SE-W164C External DVD±RW Drive

An external drive that can handle read/write just about every kind of optical disc for computers: The Writemaster SE-W164C is from Samsung, a brand that’s developed a reputation for quiet storage components.

January 23, 2006 by Devon
Cooke

The day of the Octopus PC has arrived! High speed interfaces such as Firewire
and USB 2.0 have made it possible for all kinds of components
to become portable, including hard drives and optical drives. All
these devices use a single wire to connect to the PC at the center;
hence, the Octopus PC. The Samsung Writemaster adds yet another tentacle to
the Octopus PC: It’s an external DVD burner with all the bells and whistles
of a conventional internal model.

In the case of hard drives, it’s fairly obvious why you’d want it to be portable:
Large amounts of data can be moved between computers in this way. But, optical
drives do not need to be portable to have this advantage: The discs they use
are already portable. So, why have a portable optical drive?

Portable optical drives are probably most useful to small or medium sized businesses
with many workstations that only rarely need to read or write an optical disk.
So, instead of putting a drive in every system (a significant expense even for
a small number of systems), a much smaller number of external drives can be
shared between all the systems. I can attest to this personally: There are at least
a dozen systems lying around SPCR in various states of (dis)assembly, and
none of them require an optical disk after Windows and some basic drivers are
installed. The plug-and-play portability of an external drive is invaluable
when working with multiple systems at once.

For a home user with just one or two computers, portability isn’t so useful
because there’s nowhere to move the drive to. Besides, in a personal machine,
the optical drive often sees quite a bit of use, so it’s worth it to have one
in every computer. On the other hand, an external drive is a very convenient
way to add DVD burning to a laptop.

A smallish retail box holds the necessities but no extras.

The front of the box lists a long string of numbers the proudly boast the data
speeds that the Writemaster can handle, but these aren’t terribly interesting
in themselves. The same string of numbers can be found on just about every other
contemporary drive. Besides, like the power ratings on power supplies, these
numbers refer to the peak transfer rates, which are rarely reached
except under special circumstances. Furthermore, the numbers aren’t even calculated
in the same way, which explains why 16x burns are rarely much faster than 8x
burns.

Lots of meaningless numbers…

The Writemaster comes with the basic essentials needed to run the drive, but
not too many extras:

• DVD±R/RW Drive
• Setup Guide
• Application Software & User Manual CD
• AC Adapter
• USB Cable (~1m long)
• Vertical Stand

The “Application Software” is an OEM version of Nero‘s standard
burning suite, which does everything ? if you feel like figuring it out.
For casual home users, this is an advantage; many different tasks are centralized
under a single beginner-friendly user interface. For enthusiast users, however,
only the burning software itself is really useful; the rest is mostly
bloatware ? who needs yet another media / DVD player anyway? The only exceptions
are the collection of tools in the “Nero Toolkit“, which consist of
tools for examining and tweaking the drive itself.

The most useful of these is a little program called DriveSpeed, that allows
the maximum read/write speed of the drive to be controlled. Most SPCR regulars
are already familiar with this utility, as it is one of the few proven methods
of dealing with optical drive noise.

SPECIFICATIONS

The specifications for the Writemaster are typical of the current drives on
the market: As many disc formats as possible are supported, as is buffer underrun
protection. Windows identifies the drive as an SH-W162C — the internal
equivalent of the SE-W164C.

A lot of the more obscure optical drive features (which, coincidentally, tend
to vary more between drives) are not listed in the official specifications.
The screenshot from Nero InfoTool below fills out some of the missing features,
but even that didn’t show everything. To fill in the last few missing gaps,
Exact Audio Copy
was used to detect the digital audio extraction features of the drive.

FEATURES

The Writemaster has a sleek exterior
that looks much nicer than the “steel box” appearance of interior
drives. The body of the casing is matte black plastic with a wide silvery-grey
stripe that trims three of the four sides. There are a few logos scattered around
to break the monotony of the blackness. Overall, it looks good for a little rectangular
black box.

The nine holes are for the drive activity LED.

Samsung’s aesthetic team decided a textured gray stripe would impart a sense
of style.

The rear panel holds a power button and sockets for USB and power connections.
There are also several small air vents so that the drive doesn’t overheat. There
was no evidence of a cooling fan, so any airflow will have to be generated by
convection or the spinning disc itself.

The back view.

These are the only ventilation holes on the whole drive.

Samsung has done a good job of releasing updated firmware for the Writemaster.
Since June 2005, they have released 10 different versions compatible with the SE-W164C,
although the frequency of releases has dropped as the product has matured. Updated
firmware is important for maintaining write quality and compatibility, as it
updates the database of known media types that the drive is capable of writing.

MAGIC SPEED

Buried among the marketing material for the Writemaster is a link
to a software called Magic
Speed. The stated purpose of Magic Speed is “to select and use a reading
speed from the ROM DRIVE between the max speed mode and the low noise mode“.
It seems possible to limit noise with this program.

Magic Speed was promptly downloaded and installed to see what it could do.
At first glance, it looked promising: The interface is extremely simple, with
only a single user-selectable option: A choice between “High Speed Mode”
and “Silence Mode”. A second later, all optimism vanished: The drive
was already set in Silence Mode… and it was nowhere near silent. By SPCR standards,
it wasn’t even quiet.

Further investigation revealed just how limited Magic Speed actually is. It
does one thing, and one thing only: Toggles the maximum read speed
for CDs between 40x and 48x. Write speeds and DVD speeds are not
affected, and 40x and 48x are the only options.

For the purposes of silencing an optical drive Nero’s DriveSpeed is
better in all respects except one: MagicSpeed sets the maximum speed in the
firmware of the drive, which means the program doesn’t have to be running to
be effective. In fact, when Silence Mode was engaged, Nero recognized the maximum
speed as 40x — not 48x — and could not set the speed any higher.

Because the drive ships in Silence Mode by default, most users will probably
use the drive with the maximum speed set to 40x for as long as they use the
drive. While we appreciate the lower noise (and safety) afforded by the lower
speed, it does make Samsung seem a little less than honest about the drive’s
capabilities “out of the box”. In order to take advantage of the 48x
read speed, a user has to

1. Know that the drive does not read at 48x by default.
2. Know that Magic Speed exists and what it does.
3. Download and use Magic Speed.

TEST METHODOLOGY

The Writemaster in use on a piece of foam, with SPCR’s recording rig in the
background.

The Writemaster was tested for two things: Noise level, and power consumption.
Performance for quality and speed was not tested, as it is not our range of
expertise (or real interest). Other hardware sites do a good job of evaluating optical drives
for performance, but very few do a good job of testing noise or power. We recommend
this review
at CDFreaks for performance test results about the
SE-W164C.

Both noise and power were tested at a variety of different speeds, which were
controlled by using Nero DriveSpeed. Keep in mind that the optical disc itself has a
large influence on optical drive noise. No polycarbonate optical disc is perfectly balanced, they are simply stamped out in mass quantities. The inherent imbalance of an optical disc is the primary cause of the wobbling and almost violent vibration so many optical drives exhibit when spinning at high speed.

Hence, noise measurements depend partly on the specific disc in the drive
at the time of testing. Power consumption may also be affected, although
to a lesser extent than noise. Our goal was not to find out exactly how much
noise the drive produces at such-and-such a speed — there is no exact value.
Instead, we asked the following questions:

• How does the external enclosure affect the noise quality, and how well damped
  is the drive in general?
• How does spindle speed affect noise?
• What is an acceptable tradeoff between noise and performance?

The following tools were used during testing:

• SPCR’s Digital Audio Recording System
  (modified Shuttle Zen w/pro recording sound card, preamp and mic) —
  Measures <16 dBA@1m
• B&K model 1613 sound level meter
• Extech Power Analyzer / Data Logger 380803 AC power meter
• The Samsung Writemaster application data CD (used as
  a test CD)

Ambient noise at the time of testing was 20 dBA.

TEST RESULTS

The open/close action of the tray mechanism was smooth, well-damped, quiet and fairly quick. No lengthy whirring, grinding, or clicking noises here, unlike many drives of yesteryear. In this regard, it was similar to internal BenQ, LG, Asus QuietTrack and other Samsung optical drives used around the lab recently.

The noise level during use varied considerably depending on the task and the selected speed, as shown in the table below.

The default rotation speed seemed to be 32x, although the speed changed depending
on how the drive was used. 32x was the speed the test disc would spin at when
first inserted. What it did after that depended on the usage pattern. If left
alone, the rotation speed would drop to 16x after about 45 seconds. On the other
hand, if data was copied from the disc it would spin up to 40x for the duration
of the transfer and then drop back down to 32x.

At 32x, the noise was borderline acceptable. The bulk of the noise was made
up of broadband air turbulence that was quite easy to get used to, although
the noise was instantly recognizable as soon as it was listened for. If the
Writemaster stayed at this level, it would already be a step ahead of most other
optical drives.

However, the increase to 40x was not good for the quality of noise. At this
level, a distinct hum could be heard that was not a significant part of the
noise character at 32x. It was accompanied by a high-pitched squeal reminiscent
of a poorly damped hard drive. The squeal was not loud compared to the rest
of the noise, but it was easily the most irritating part of the noise. The amount
of vibration at this level was also quite high, and could potentially produce
more noise if placed on a resonant surface.

Considering that the (theoretical) difference in performance between 32x and
40x is only 25%, the acoustic penalty seems to far outweighs the performance
benefit in this jump. Samsung could have made a much nicer sounding drive simply
by limiting Magic Speed‘s Silent Mode to 32x instead of 40x. Such a drive might
prove difficult to sell though, since most consumers are likely to look only
at the performance numbers.

When the disc was in the drive but not in active use, the spindle speed dropped
down to 16x, where is was difficult to hear clearly. At this level, the noise
character was more or less the same as a quiet fan. Motor hum and vibration
were almost entirely absent.

16x is probably the lowest speed that still maintains an acceptable level of
performance. Although slight acoustic gains could be had by reducing the speed
even more, these gains were offset by noticeable decreases in read speed. Consider:
8x differs from 16x by a factor of two, yet the noise difference at idle was
only 1 dBA@1m. Compare that to the difference between 16x and 32x (also a factor
of two), but the acoustic difference here was 8 dBA@1m. Also, keep in mind that
as the nominal read speed becomes higher, it gets more difficult for the drive
to maintain that level of performance, so the actual difference in performance
may be less than the numbers would suggest.

The acoustic advantage of speeds below 16x was made even more dubious by the
fact that the lowest speeds seemed to exhibit a lot more seeking than higher
speeds, and the seeks would last for longer, since the transfer time was greater.
This effect is noticeable in the power consumption measurements, which increase
below 16x.

The seek noise of the Writemaster did not change much no matter how fast the
disc was spinning. The only exception was at 4x, where the seeks seemed quite
muted in comparison to faster speeds. Because of this, the seeks tended to be
most audible at lower speeds, when they weren’t well masked by the noise of
the disc spinning. Seeks at 40x were barely audible, not because they weren’t
there, but because they were so much quieter than the rest of the drive. Subjectively,
the seeks were similar to the sound of an inkjet printer: Rhythmic and quite
tonal, with an almost musical character. Compared to most internal drives, they
seemed quite sharp and could probably be a bit more muted.

MP3 RECORDINGS

Several ten second-recordings were made of the Writemaster in
a number of different states.

Samsung
Writemaster SE-W164C: 16x (Idle), 22 dBA@1m

Samsung
Writemaster SE-W164C: 16x (Seek), 27 dBA@1m

Samsung
Writemaster SE-W164C: 32x (Idle), 30 dBA@1m

Samsung
Writemaster SE-W164C: 32x (Seek), 32 dBA@1m

Samsung
Writemaster SE-W164C: 40x (Idle), 34 dBA@1m

Samsung
Writemaster SE-W164C: 40x (Seek), 35 dBA@1m

CONCLUSIONS

Overall, the Samsung SE-W164C is a nice product, although not particularly quiet. It has the advantage of portability:
It can be plugged into any system that runs Windows XP and immediately used
to read a disc. Thanks to USB and Plug-and-Play, CDs can be burned using Windows’
built-in capabilities without needing to do anything more than plugging in the
drive. Until Windows Vista is released, burning DVDs will require installing
some software, but eventually that too will be built into the operating system.

Like all external optical drives, the SE-W164C requires an AC power source, which limits its true portability. Certainly, any device tethered to AC power is of limited utility for road warriors.

In terms of noise, the external Writemaster is no better than
an internal burner, but neither is it any worse. If the drive is used repeatedly
with the same system, it is worthwhile to install Nero DriveSpeed and
turn the maximum speed down to 16x except for short bursts of copying when it
can be turned up to 24x or 32x. However, because this is software, it is not
a viable solution if the drive is intended to be portable and used with multiple PCs, since DriveSpeed
may not be installed or properly configured on all systems. It would
be nice if Samsung’s Magic Speed utility could adjust
the maximum speed to below 40x.

Many thanks to Samsung
Canada for the Writemaster SE-W164C sample.

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