What is considered good enough in tests

SuperG · Mar 17, 2003

Hi ALL,

I am a little new to the testing of CDRs. So if anyone could tell me using Nero CD Speed, what results are considered very good, good, OK, bad, and very bad. And also, if I can use this CD Doctor program I hear so much about. I am not sure it is compatible with my drive. Well lets start with an example and then someone can give me their opinion. I have a 74MIN 650MB TDK, burned over 2 years ago, and stored in good condition, with no visible marks/discoloration on it. The actuall written length is 71mins, and 627MB, and its a DATA CD. With ATIP: 97m 24s 01f
Manufacturer: Taiyo Yuden Company Ltd. Recording Layer: Cyanine Material.
And I know that Taiyo Yuden is suppose to be among the BEST for quality CDRs.

I decided to pop this into both my CDR/RW dirve, which is a Ricoh 7200A, and my regular 50x MAX CD-ROM, of which I do not know the brand, nero cd speed just says "E-IDE CD-ROM 50X L V15".

First, for my CD-ROM, using CD Quality Check on Nero CD Speed, and it reported, 458,640 Errors (with 3 red spikes through the majority of the disc, and as many a 6 red spikes directly at the end of the disc (maybe because the CDR is not finalized???)). Then with my CD-ROM and Nero CD Speed ScanDisc, running both the filetest and the surface scan. For the File Test, it gave the result, files checked: 21 / Errors: 0. As for the surface scan, I got the result: 98.83% Good, 0% Damaged, and 1.17% Unreadable.
Next, for my CDR/RW drive, using CD Quality Check on Nero CD Speed, and it reported, 0 ERRORS!!! (no spikes). Then with my CDR/RW and Nero CD Speed ScanDisc, running both the filetest and the surface scan. For the File Test, it gave the result, files checked: 21 / Errors: 0. As for the surface scan, I got the result: 100.00% Good, 0% Damaged, and 0% Unreadable.
I am a little confused as to how my burner returned NO ERRORS AT ALL, but my regular CDROM reported 400000+ errors, and the unreadable sectors.

Now after seeing all this, I am guessing since the burner read it perfectly, the CDR is fine, but why the difference between my CDROM and CDR/RW. And does that mean anything for the longevity of my media? Also, assuming I am using my CDR/RW for my tests, what is considered acceptable for my other media? Is less than 100,000 errors good enough? less than 50,000?, or does it have to be 0 errors? And how does the surface scan need to be, generally, ?% Good, ?% Damaged, and ?% Unreadable. I have a lot of important stuff already stored on CDRs, and back then, I did not know much about quality of CDRs, I just picked up what I could find. So therefore, I would like to test my CDRs, and move the data onto different CDRs, if there is a problem with them, before they die out completely. Also, are all of these tests required before you can make a judgement on that CDR, or is it OK if the first test has no errors, can you determine that it is OK? For example, if I run the CD Quality test first, and I get a result of 0 ERRORS, then is there still a need to run the file test and surface scan? And in the same way, what if I ran only the Surface Test first, and it gave me 100% Good, do I still need to run the file test and the CD Quality Test? Thank You.

SuperG

P.S. Also, please let me know if I can use CD Doctor with my CDR/RW or my CDROM. Thanks.

scarecrow · Mar 17, 2003

Never use a burner to do media integrity checks. Always use a CD-ROM. And I'd rather trust dedicated forensics tools like CD/DVD Inspector, and not semifunctional gimmicks like CD-Speed.
Surely enough Inspector is not a saint (the device driver it uses is very obtrusive), but if you activate it just every time you want to scan a CD, it gives really reliable results. Actually if you follow the Inspector online manual you will se why the diagnostics should be performed on a CD-ROM, and not the burner.
Of course there are also some other very good diagnostic tools, but mr. Deppe's CD-Speed feels and looks as dubious as other Nero goodies. Actually you already have a good idea about it by your own experience.

Duracell · Mar 18, 2003

one thing in addition to scarecrow's posting:
your reading device (CD-ROM, DVD-ROM) must be able to report C2 errors; otherwise your test is worthless;

Greetings from
Duracell

SuperG · Mar 18, 2003

scarecrow and Duracell,

Thanks for your response.

Duracell: According to Feurio, it said BOTH my Burner and my CD-ROM support C2 Error Reporting. So unless it is wrong, my CDROM should support it.

Scarecrow: Can you recomend any other diagnostic tools, since you feel Nero CD-Speed is not worthy, because I checked on CD/DVD Inspector, and apparently from some people I asked, and thier website, you cannot use it in Windows XP, which is what I have. So any other suggestions would be great. I heard CD Doctor is a good program, it reports C1 and C2 errors, but from most people I have talked to, neither my burner or my cd-rom support it. I believe only LiteON burners do.

Thanks,

SuperG

scarecrow · Mar 18, 2003

SuperG: who threw at you that boulder about Windows XP?
http://www.arrowkey.com/cddvd_inspector.html
XP are 100% supported, just take some care and keep the Inspector device driver deactivated when you don't use the program- it can cause severe conflicts with quite a few burning programs.
the only problem with it is that it is very expensive, you may have a look at his cheaper little brother, CD/DVD diagnostic instead.

SuperG · Mar 18, 2003

scarecrow,

Ok thanks, I guess it does support win XP. However, the CD/DVD Inspector is $350 to buy, and they do not have a trial version, unless you are a qualified law enforcement and forensic users, and u have to contact them. The only thing that is available is a try out version of CD/DVD Diagnostic. Will that have the specific tools to check out the CDRs? Otherwise, I will need a different program, prefrably one that is not so expensive, etc. Thanks.

SuperG

scarecrow · Mar 18, 2003

CD/DVD Diagnostic will do your job fine, and you don't even have to buy it!
The difference of the demo vs. the retail is that the demo cannot recover lost files- which you don't need for what you want to do. And I don't think that you need the MD5 hashtable abilities, nor the low level analysis of Inspector- they are exclusively aimed for forensics' investigations on RW media.

LTR12101B · Mar 18, 2003

I don't think DOCTOR will work with either of those - it's mostly Liteon (or equivalent Mediatek chipset writer) and Sanyo (also sanyo-chipset Liteons and others).

Most writers can read better than most CD ROM's - so unless the writer is required for special test methods (eg. DOCTOR), check with a CD-ROM - and read/copy difficult disks using the writer - most software should allow same-drive copy by imaging to the HD - even if you have to do it manually in two steps.

The CD-ROM is not old enough to expect it to have any difficulty with CD-R media, so I'd take its error reports as a suggestion that you should copy that CD.

It can be the case, that two worst-case tolerances combine - The media, the way the drive wrote it, and the way the CD-ROM reads it.

Only other possibility, Sunlight! - Cyanine is about the worst for light stability, and silver-top tends to suffer more, as the top is not fully opaque.