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Superdrive in new iMac

T

Tec972

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 19, 2010
220
144
I am curious to know what superdrives you have in your new imacs. Please state which model you have and what model superdrive. I have heard the rip speeds on the Hitachi (HL) drives are over twice as slow due to the drive slowing down.

Surprised everyone hasn't been making a bigger deal of it. I will have to find the site I saw the benchmarks on but they mentioned the handbrake benchmark took over twice as long due to the Hitachi drive.
 
pixel-vs-pencil said:
I think this may be your source:
http://www.macworld.com/article/153385/2010/08/36ghzcorei5_imac.html

Somebody posted the article the other day and I was curious that nobody had really picked up on that too:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/995317/
Click to expand...

Thank you Pixel, that was exactly the article I meant to refer to but couldn't find it while at work. Surfing the net is a chore at work due to corporate filters and slow connection.

I find it ironic they would even consider throwing that drive with riplock in what would be considered a high end Apple system. Kinda defeats the whole purpose although it is only an 8x drive they cripple it further.

I wonder if there is a way to disable that feature? Would love to hear from some folks that may know.
 
Tec972 said:
Thank you Pixel, that was exactly the article I meant to refer to but couldn't find it while at work. Surfing the net is a chore at work due to corporate filters and slow connection.

I find it ironic they would even consider throwing that drive with riplock in what would be considered a high end Apple system. Kinda defeats the whole purpose although it is only an 8x drive they cripple it further.

I wonder if there is a way to disable that feature? Would love to hear from some folks that may know.
Click to expand...

I'm wondering that too, if you can disable the riplock feature??

I have the HL drive and its very slow in ripping DVDs.
 
I'm not sure if it helps, but I have a Matshita DVR-R UJ-898 in my 13" MBP.

Edit: and i believe that the drive in my 13" MB is also a matshita drive...
 
dsc888 said:
Same here on my i7. I don't do much ripping so I actually prefer a quieter drive. I only take issue with my loud Seagate HDD:D
Click to expand...

For what it's worth, I just ripped an audio CD in iTunes and the max speed displayed on the 12th track was 21.2x which is decent. Subjectively, the same CD took almost twice as long to rip on my 2010 MBP i7 due to the duo core but the speeds were identicle in terms of the optical drives. My MBP also has the Hitachi drive.
 
dsc888 said:
For what it's worth, I just ripped an audio CD in iTunes and the max speed displayed on the 12th track was 21.2x which is decent. Subjectively, the same CD took almost twice as long to rip on my 2010 MBP i7 due to the duo core but the speeds were identicle in terms of the optical drives. My MBP also has the Hitachi drive.
Click to expand...

Arg, when I rip cd's on my core i7 pc i get 40x in itunes. But I rarely rip in itunes because as far as i know it doesn't let me put an cd into just one folder. If anyone can shed some light on that situation i would be greatful.

I am expecting to pick up my core i7 imac today but an 8x drive is a disappointment. I wont even use that POS. Will hook up a 24x external and rip some cd's and see what kind of rip speeds i get.
 
dsc888 said:
For what it's worth, I just ripped an audio CD in iTunes and the max speed displayed on the 12th track was 21.2x which is decent. Subjectively, the same CD took almost twice as long to rip on my 2010 MBP i7 due to the duo core but the speeds were identicle in terms of the optical drives. My MBP also has the Hitachi drive.
Click to expand...

DSC, i really don't know if the MBP drive has riplock or not. There is nothing wrong with a Hitachi drive but the riplock cripples it when you need the speed during rips.
 
dsc888 said:
For what it's worth, I just ripped an audio CD in iTunes and the max speed displayed on the 12th track was 21.2x which is decent. Subjectively, the same CD took almost twice as long to rip on my 2010 MBP i7 due to the duo core but the speeds were identicle in terms of the optical drives. My MBP also has the Hitachi drive.
Click to expand...

I've heard riplock only works when your are ripping a DVD not a CD, although I'm not 100% positive on that point.
 
Tec972 said:
Arg, when I rip cd's on my core i7 pc i get 40x in itunes. But I rarely rip in itunes because as far as i know it doesn't let me put an cd into just one folder. If anyone can shed some light on that situation i would be greatful.

I am expecting to pick up my core i7 imac today but an 8x drive is a disappointment. I wont even use that POS. Will hook up a 24x external and rip some cd's and see what kind of rip speeds i get.
Click to expand...

Yikes! So are you telling me that I have a crappy optical drive on top of my noisy Seagate HDD?:) Ignorance WAS bliss! Since I seldomly use my Superdrive, I am not too concerned.

Was your 40x speed in iTunes or was it in different software?
 
Tec972 said:
DSC, i really don't know if the MBP drive has riplock or not. There is nothing wrong with a Hitachi drive but the riplock cripples it when you need the speed during rips.
Click to expand...

Interesting point. I am not bothered much by it since I don't use the drive much. As long as it's functional, I am fine.
 
dsc888 said:
Yikes! So are you telling me that I have a crappy optical drive on top of my noisy Seagate HDD?:) Ignorance WAS bliss! Since I seldomly use my Superdrive, I am not too concerned.

Was your 40x speed in iTunes or was it in different software?
Click to expand...

That 40x is the upper speed i would see in an itunes rip. But that is on my i7 PC, not the MAC. I did some ripping in itunes this weekend on my brand new i7 mac. I only used the superdrive twice. I have the pioneer drive in my system. Along with the WD HDD. I got somewhere between 20 25x best case scenario with the superdrive and got up to 30 - 33x with a 20x external drive. What is odd is that sometimes a cd just does not rip fast. I will eject it and try again and sometimes the drive will spin up faster the second time I try it. (This happened with the external and the superdrive).

Another thing, is that the superdrive is rated at 24x CD read, if I remember correctly but it still did not outperform the external LG drive I was using.
 
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