In the past (before I discovered Nero), when I burned files, I used a program called Testpath to make sure there were no errors on the CD. I was burning a lot of stuff today on cheapies (K-Hypermedia) to send to someone via the mail, and I noticed something disturbing.
My burner supports up to 16x, but K-Hypermedia only rates these CD-R's at 8x. I decided to burn a CD at 16x on them to see what would happen using Nero. I enabled "check iso after burn" to make sure there were no errors. Anyways, nero burned it, checked it, and said it was good. To make ABSOLUTELY sure, I opened the drive, closed it, and ran testpath on it. Testpath said the data didn't match.
This really disturbed me because Nero claimed the data matched, and I've been using their data checking exclusively for quite a while. I decided to see if my Toshiba DVD drive would fare any better, and this time testpath gave the disk a passing score. wtf? Also, the check took about 10 minutes using the toshiba drive. It should take no more then 3. I can't be 100% sure, but it sounded like it tried spinning the CD at 40x, but dropped back to something slower after 10 seconds or so.
Anyways, after this incident I was pressed for time and went back to burning CD's. This time I was burning at 8x, the maximum recommended speed. I again used nero "check iso after burn" to make sure it was valid, and it was. I again used testpath on the cd (after ejecting and putting it back in) on the acer drive and it failed. I used testpath on the CD in my Toshiba drive, and it passed, in the normal 3 minutes this time.
Something is very wrong here. Either Nero or Testpath have a bug in them, and I'm almost positive it's not testpath because writing this type of utility is trivial. Could there be some firmware bug with the CD-Writer? Do these cd's really have errors but the Toshiba is good enough to fix them in some way the Acer can't? And how? What exactly is Nero's disk check doing if it is indeed passing disks that should fail?
I currently have a huge archive of CD-R's, and it is growing all the time. I thought Nero's iso check was a godsend so I could make absolutely sure that what I was burning was perfect when it left the burner, but apparently I can no longer make that assumption.
So, everyone out there, what are your thoughts? Why is this funky behavior going on, and how can you be absolutely, 100% sure, that the disk you just burned is indeed flawless?
-Chu
EDIT: Spell check is a good thing
EDIT#2: Hrmm . . . that edit broke my Testpath link.
My burner supports up to 16x, but K-Hypermedia only rates these CD-R's at 8x. I decided to burn a CD at 16x on them to see what would happen using Nero. I enabled "check iso after burn" to make sure there were no errors. Anyways, nero burned it, checked it, and said it was good. To make ABSOLUTELY sure, I opened the drive, closed it, and ran testpath on it. Testpath said the data didn't match.
This really disturbed me because Nero claimed the data matched, and I've been using their data checking exclusively for quite a while. I decided to see if my Toshiba DVD drive would fare any better, and this time testpath gave the disk a passing score. wtf? Also, the check took about 10 minutes using the toshiba drive. It should take no more then 3. I can't be 100% sure, but it sounded like it tried spinning the CD at 40x, but dropped back to something slower after 10 seconds or so.
Anyways, after this incident I was pressed for time and went back to burning CD's. This time I was burning at 8x, the maximum recommended speed. I again used nero "check iso after burn" to make sure it was valid, and it was. I again used testpath on the cd (after ejecting and putting it back in) on the acer drive and it failed. I used testpath on the CD in my Toshiba drive, and it passed, in the normal 3 minutes this time.
Something is very wrong here. Either Nero or Testpath have a bug in them, and I'm almost positive it's not testpath because writing this type of utility is trivial. Could there be some firmware bug with the CD-Writer? Do these cd's really have errors but the Toshiba is good enough to fix them in some way the Acer can't? And how? What exactly is Nero's disk check doing if it is indeed passing disks that should fail?
I currently have a huge archive of CD-R's, and it is growing all the time. I thought Nero's iso check was a godsend so I could make absolutely sure that what I was burning was perfect when it left the burner, but apparently I can no longer make that assumption.
So, everyone out there, what are your thoughts? Why is this funky behavior going on, and how can you be absolutely, 100% sure, that the disk you just burned is indeed flawless?
-Chu
EDIT: Spell check is a good thing
EDIT#2: Hrmm . . . that edit broke my Testpath link.
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