CD error detection

[Lin Howard]

Thanks for your help fellows. I have made a little progress in my search. There is a product called DED ($200) and DED Pro ($350) that you can attach to the coaxial or optical output of your CD player and it will either blink or count, depending on which model you get.

The PlexWriter Premium burner ($100) has software called Plextools that has a test called Q-check that I think will show fixable and unfixable errors.

I found a freeware program and have downloaded it. I don't want to load it till I get my c drive backed up by Drive Image. I haven't done this in a coupla years (since Rich told me about the Stomp Back Up My PC program). Naturally, Drive Image is giving me grief, but once I figure out that speed bump, I'll give this freebie a try and let you know how it works out.

Can't get much more frugal than free....

[Rich LePage]

Backup My PC is good for data and also for boot drives on Win 98 and ME, but not so good for boot drives in XP. For that, would recommend Ghost.
Version 9 of it is designed for XP, but I also use the older Ghost 2003 on FAT 32 formatted XP systems to make an image of the C drive that can be restored when XP complicates itself to the point of no return.

Backup My PC though is great for Medit data etc. I use it with DVD recorders all the time lately, and still also with SCSI tape drives for project backups.
Sonic now owns the program, but Stomp apparently still distributes it.
Sonic also now owns Roxio by the way. Previously Backup My PC was owned by Veritas, and before that, Seagate Software.

[Lin Howard]

I'm a idiot !! This started because I burned a high speed copy of a CD I had made using PlexWriter 48/24/48A burner and it's Oak software. I make the master on my x8 burner with MicroCD and then copy it onto my hard drive with the Oak software and burn x48 dupes from it. The CD started out with spoken word on track one and the rest music. After I burned the 1st copy, I put it on my studio CD player to verify it ok. The spoken word sounded terrible. Glitches up the ying yang. I found I could play it back on every other CD player in my house ok, and the custie was having no troubles. Then I found I could slow the burner down to x32 and it sounded ok.

Then I start this quest to find a way to measure errors. I did load the freeware DiskCheck1057, but it didn't do what I wanted. Wednesday, I tried to burn some CDs and found the burner was doing alot worse. I decided the burner was at fault and ordered the Plexwriter Premium with the PlexTools software. Then Friday, I decided to stop by Radio Shack and see if there was such a thing as a laser cleaner. Natch they had one for 13 smackers.

I brought that thing home and ran it on my x48 burner, and sheezam, it burns perfectly again. What an idiot !! I'm not going to clean my CD player since it seems to be the only one that will let me know when the laser lens is getting dirty. Thanks for yall's suggestions......Lin