This has been bothering me for quite some time. I have about 60-80 used CD ROM, CD writers, DVD ROM, DVD writers that need tested. The only thing that I can really think to do in order to test them is install XP?? Too bad it takes 1 1/2 hours to do that on these crappy P2 & P3 systems I setup to test with.

I'm wondering if anyone knows of software that will do a tough read test on a CD/DVD drive?

This is going to be very time consuming and probably not worth my time. Very few people come in looking for an old CD drive! Although it will be nice to have things cleaned up a bit, all those bad ones finally in the dumpster where they belong!!

Ummm, I though there were bootable DOS disks you could download to do kind of a burn-in of a optical drive... not sure though. Would be MUCH easier and faster than installing XP though...

What about Bart's Stuff Test... put a CD disk in with a large file on it ( maybe an ISO file ) and have it test it in read-only mode

@SteelTrepid

Quick test: use a bad readable cd and boot PE.

Do you know UBCD4Win That's a hardware error detection tool too.
Booting PE require stable hardware.
At textmode there is no OS error correction.

A broken LiteOn writer did destroy a 32x US+ CD-RW.
After that, a Plextor Premium detected up to 1000 C1 errors per sector, few C2 errors, no CU.
Very few drives boot PE now, most drives fail. Booting UBCD4Win is the ultimate hardware test.

Yea, but that can take a lot of time, especially on an old drive on an old system. It would be much faster to have a disk (or a small floppy image converted to a tiny CD image) that you can use to immediately do a burn-in of the drive and whatnot. I know I've seen something like this somewhere, I just can't remember... if I do, I'll post. :-\

I agree with cdob, UBCD4Win is my tool of choice for testing optical drives. First I boot a cdr then a cdrw.

If it's a burner then the ultimate burning test is to burn a Knoppix iso image (700mb) then boot it.

Tom

Just a few links that might be useful.
http://www.mscience.com/
http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html#5.6
http://reviews-zdnet.com.com/Labs/4520-6603_16-5141963.html
cdob and pcuser both endorse a very practical and free method, but it would be cool to have an app that would solve the problem of checking a large number of devices over a short period of time. Sorry I can't point you to a specific application, but might give you some ideas.

http://www.elpros.si/CDCheck/

http://fusion.zejn.si/CDCheck/CDCheck3.html

EMSA disk check will also work on CD/DVD's

If you have a known good CD/DVD these tools will tell you if the drive can read the CD, which should be a good indication of whether it's working or not.

Thanks for the suggestions guys! I do appreciate it. I'll check into a few things and just might start using the project to test various parts. I agree that booting the project is quite hardware intensive. I usually install XP when testing a motherboard, I have 5 different testing areas so I just walk on to the next after starting one.

I was hoping to find a good utility that would analyse and report what speeds the drive was actually reading at, if there were issues, etc.

You have a few problems here. Just because it may fail your process doesn't mean the disk is bad. First thing is a lot of old CD roms have trouble reading CDR's or RW's this doesn't mean the drive is bad it just means it is so old it doesn't recognize the media. For the cost I would go through them find a few newer and decent ones. Test these however you want.

Boot ubcd4win with them - confirms read
Burn something in ubcd4win - confirms write

I really don't see why it needs to be more difficult than this. 99.9% of the time they either work or they don't.

Then trash all the rest as it isn't worth anyone's time with DVD burns at a cost of $35 a pop.

Also sometime the manufacture has firmware updates that can fix some of the read issues but then again is it worth your time to research this?

What good DVD burner would only cost $35 in your area? The cheapest good DVD burner I can find, which is OEM, is like $55.

Good is really a subjective word when talking CD and DVD burners.
ARS Technica - System Guide

Prices Subject to change.

I started thinking more about the project for testing, and then remembered that we have Nero InfoTool in the project.

Nero appears to have several "goodies" that may help me. Check out all the tools:
http://www.cdspeed2000.com/go.php3?link=do...ml#neroinfotool

Yes, Nero is good...

how about one of these to cut down on swapout time usb to ide adapter makes it hot swap
http://www.dansdata.com/usbadapt.htm


R-Driver III
Connect any Serial ATA / Serial ATA II / IDE HardDisk to your USB 2.0 Port

Specifications :
# Fully support USB 2.0
# USB Mass Storage supported, Hot Swappable.
# Supports SATA 1.5Gbps data transfer rate & USB 2.0 480Mbps high speed data transfer rate.
# Support 3.5 inch SATA/SATA II HardDisk up to 500GB.
# Support 2.5 inch IDE HardDisk, 3.5 inch IDE HardDisk, 5.25 IDE inch HardDisk, CD-ROM(max. 52x), CD-RW, DVD-ROM, DVD-RW, Combo device
# Supports IDE and enhanced IDE hard drives up to 400GB in size
# Supports ATA/ATAPI CD-ROM/R/RW DVD-ROM and more
# Supports ATA-4, ATA-6/ATAPI-6 Specification 1.0
# Chipset : JMicron-JM20337
# Tested withWestern Digital/Maxtor/Seagate/Hitachi SATA HardDisk.
# LED Indicated USB to SATA/IDE Cable.
# LED Indicated Power Supply.
# AC Power Adapter input : 100 ~ 240V, 50/60Hz, 0.5A
# AC Power Adapter output : 12V/2A, 5V/2A
# Support PC/ Mac OS/ Notebook
# Support OS : Win98SE, 2000, ME, XP, Mac OS 8.6 or higher, Linux 2.4.X
# Win2000, ME, XP no driver needed.
# Connecting SATA and IDE HDD together with HDD Splitter Power Cable