Displays various information about installed CD/DVD drives, their characteristics and media read/write capabilities various types. In addition, VSO Inspector can scan disks for errors and check the readability of data written to them. Free. (gcontent)Download VSO Inspector (/gcontent)

Nero CD-DVD Speed

Version: 4.7.15
Size: 807 Kb
Status: free
(gcontent)Download Nero CD-DVD Speed ​​(/gcontent)

A free utility that is part of the paid Nero. More than one generation of testers have been convinced of the indisputable results of the benchmark test for checking the quality of an optical drive.

The program can test how well the drive copes with reading and writing disks of various types, how much time it spends searching for blocks of information, how fast it can transfer data, how much it loads the central processor, how much it takes to spin up and stop the disk, is everything in order with the interface .

There is also additional information, but they are of less interest. The report on the work done is presented in the form of a visual graph, on which problem areas are immediately evident. In addition, the utility is able to check the quality of the discs themselves at the same time and try to collect basic information about them. AT latest versions support for Blu-ray and HD DVD has been added and optimized, but this will not be as relevant in the coming months. You may have a natural question, why do you actually need to test your drive? I will answer.

For example, it's not uncommon for a drive to ideally record discs of only one type (let's say everything is fine with DVD + R, but DVD-R - through a stump deck). Having found out this not the most pleasant fact, you can choose the type of media that suits you.

Nero CD DVD Speed ​​- test cd dvd discs and drives

In this article I will describe program test Nero CD DVD Speed, which is developed by Nero Softwsre AG. By using CD-DVD programs Speed ​​can be tested not only CD DVD drives, but also perform the test itself disk, view disk information, and more. CD DVD Speed ​​test program included with the Nero software suite, but CD-DVD Speed ​​is a separate download and is free.

You can select tests by clicking the "File - Options" menu and selecting "Standard tests", in addition to selecting tests in the window that opens, you can set the read speed, write speed, as well as the disk spin-up time in seconds before reading data from the test cd dvd disc.

In the menu of the Nero CD-DVD Speed ​​program, click Run test and consider the tests individually:

Transmission speed
The baud rate test displays the results in a graph. The graph displays two lines in green and yellow.

The green line shows the data transfer rate in multiples of 150 KB/s.

The yellow line shows the disk rotation speed in rpm multiplied by 1000.

The CD-DVD Speed ​​program detects the disc type at the beginning of testing, and depending on the type, various tests will be performed:

• Data CD or DVD - will measure the speed of reading data from a CD or DVD disc.
• Audio CD - Digital Audio Reading Rate (DAE) will be determined. DAE stands for Digital Audio Extraction (Digital Audio Extraction). This test parameter determines the drive's ability to play digital audio data bypassing the sound card.
• CD-R or CD-RW - the speed of writing data to the disc will be calculated, but the recording itself will not be performed on the disc.

Test setup Baud rate

To configure the Transfer Speed ​​test, select "File - Options" in the menu of the Nero CD-DVD Speed ​​utility and select Transfer Speed ​​in the left window, and configure the Transfer Speed ​​test using the parameters on the right side:

• Test length - this slider adjusts the balance between the quality of the test (Accuracy) and its speed (Speed). The more accurate the test, the slower its execution.
• Show rotation speed - will display a line showing on the graph the rotation speed of the CD-DVD disc in the drive.
• CD Max Speed, DVD Max Speed ​​- shows the maximum speed that can be displayed on the graph during CD or DVD testing.
• High-resolution graph - for a clearer display of data on the graph and an increase in the quality of testing.
• Recording mode - specifies the recording method, TAO (Track At Once) or SAO (Session At Once). SAO allows you to select CD (DVD) with over. capacity and write to disk until an error occurs. If you use SAO with CD (DVD) with over. capacity, it is possible to increase the capacity of a CD (DVD) by 100-150 MB, but not all drives support this function. In the window opposite the CD (DVD) with over. capacity indicates the maximum volume of a CD (DVD) disc in minutes, seconds and frames, exceeding the standard volume (79:59.74), for example, you can enter 90:00.00.
• Disc type (imitation only) - indicates the type of data on the disc, that is, data or sound.
• Buffer underrun protection - This option allows you to enable or disable buffer underrun protection. To test CD-R, DVD-R(RW) it is recommended to enable this option.

DAE quality

The DAE Quality test determines how well CD DVD drive extracts audio data from a CD-DVD disc.
The test score can range from 0 to 10.

Access Times/Pos.

This test determines the time spent searching and accessing data on this test. This test determines how much the processor is loaded when testing the drive at one of four speeds - 1x, 2x, 4x and 8x. It is not recommended to use resource-intensive applications during testing, as then the received data will be incorrect.

Peak. flow This test checks the data transfer rate from the controller to CD DVD drive.

Spin up/stop
This test measures the time it takes for a disk to spin up and then stop.

Now we click in the menu of the program Nero CD-DVD Speed ​​Advanced and consider additional tests:

Advanced DAE quality test

This test requires a special disc created by Nero CD-DVD Speed.
To create a special test disk, click Advanced - Advanced DAE Quality Test - Create Test. CD.
Uncheck the box next to Imitate, when the checkbox is checked, an image will be created and recording will not occur.

Now insert a blank disc into the burner and press Start, after which a test CD will be written.
To start the test, click Advanced - Extended DAE quality test - Start test... After testing, its results will be shown.

Overflow test. records

This test determines if a CD-RW drive supports burning discs using Overburn technology and how much the CD space can increase when using Overburn technology.

To run the test, click Advanced - Test overflow. recording, we see such a window as in the figure, select the CD recording speed, and in the Capacity test window, you must enter the amount of data larger than the standard size of 700 MB (79:57.74), but should not exceed 90:00.00, since data recording with more than 90:00.00 data volume may damage the drive or the CD itself.

During the test, no data is written to the CD.
After the end of the test, the information window displays the result, which is located in the Record position group (Fig.).

• The position indicates the amount of data previously written to the disk.
• Relates Shows the amount of disk space in relation to the standard disk space.

Disc quality
This test can check the quality of CD-R(RW) discs.

In the Disc Quality tab, you can make the necessary Settings for this test.
The graph displays two curves, one shows the data read speed and the other shows data read errors.

After the end of this test, the Statistics window will open with the main summary data.

Disk scan

In this tab, you can make the necessary Settings for this test and run this type of test.
This test determines the quality of the disk and makes an assessment of the safety of the information stored on it.

Inf. about disk

In the Info tab about the disk is displayed:
Disc type, Capacity, Tracks (number of tracks), Sessions (number of sessions).

CHKDSK is a standard verification application hard drive for errors, detecting bad sectors on the hard drive, fixing file system errors. CHKDSK (short for Check Disk) is built into operating system Windows.

The Chkdsk.exe program finds file system errors, bad sectors on the hard drive, and fixes the detected problems. If the disk file system error check finds problems, the CHKDSK check runs when the computer is turned on.

When using Chkdsk.exe in different Windows versions, there are some differences:

• In Windows XP, the chkdsk utility finds file system errors and repairs bad sectors on a disk.
• On Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, at default settings, CHKDSK finds file system errors but does not fix them. To fix file system errors and check disk sectors, you must manually set certain parameters.

Problems in the Windows operating system affect its performance. File system errors occur in the following situations:

• Due to a power outage - if the computer is suddenly turned off, an unexpected system failure may occur (to prevent such situations, use UPS - uninterruptible power supplies).
• If the system is infected with malware.
• Due to computer hardware failure.

Bad sectors may appear on the surface of the hard drive. When checking a disk with chkdsk, bad bad sectors of the hard disk are marked as damaged, the system no longer reads or writes information from bad sectors of the disk. The system will try to recover data from bad sectors (clusters, directories), if possible.

Check disk chkdsk runs in two modes:

• in the graphical interface by means of the system;
• using the command line.

If the computer does not boot due to problems, check HDD You can use the installation DVD with the Windows operating system. After booting from removable media, in the system recovery options, select the command line to start checking the disk for errors.

In this tutorial, I will show you how to use the CHKDSK application using an operating system as an example. Windows systems 10.

CHKDSK check for file system troubleshooting in GUI

The easiest option for checking the file system for errors is to run the CHKDSK program in the graphical interface using the system tools.

Do the following:

1. Launch File Explorer.
2. Right-click on the local drive you want to scan.
3. In the "Properties: Local Disk (X:)" window, go to the "Service" tab.
4. In the "Check for errors" section, click on the "Check" button.

1. In the “Error Checking (Local Disk (X:))” window that opens, select “Check Disk”, despite the fact that the operating system says that no errors were found during the disk check.

In Windows 7, additional verification options are available; to run them, you must check the boxes in front of the items:

• Automatically fix system errors.
• Scan and repair bad sectors.

1. The scanning process starts and will take some time. The scan time depends on the size of the local disk and on the amount of data on the disk.

During file system error checking, the status is scanned:

• The basic structure of the file system is checked.
• Filename associations are checked.
• The security descriptors are checked.
• The USN log is checked.

1. After the verification process is completed, information about its result will open. In this case, the disk was successfully checked, no errors were found. If errors are found, you will be prompted to fix them.

For details, click on the "Show Details" link.

In the Event Viewer snap-in window, click Details.

In the "Event Properties" window, in the "General" and "Details" tabs, detailed information about the result of the disk check is available.

The resulting information about checking the disk for file system errors can be copied into Notepad or another text editor for further study.

How to Run CHKDSK (Check Disk) on Command Prompt

The chkdsk command to check the hard drive with the given parameters is executed from the command line:

1. Run command prompt as administrator. Read How to Find the Command Prompt in Windows
2. To check the system partition (system disk) in the command line interpreter window, enter the command:

chkdsk c: /f

1. Press the "Enter" key.
2. A message will appear in the command prompt window stating that the CHKDSK command cannot be executed because the specified volume is in use system process. To start checking the system disk after rebooting the system, press the "Y" key, and then press the "Enter" key.
3. During the system reboot, the system disk will be checked and repaired.

An example command template looks like this: ["chkdsk" (application name)], space, [drive letter followed by a colon ("c:", "d:", "f:", etc.), path, or filename], space, [command options].

Command parameters have the following meanings:

• /F - checking the file system and automatically fixing the errors found.
• / R - searching for bad sectors on the disk, restoring the contents (the command requires the mandatory key / F, example: "chkdsk C: / F / R").
• /V - show full paths of files, display file names on the disk, in the file NTFS system– display of messages about cleaning.
• /X - disconnect disk before checking, handles this disk will not be checked (the mandatory key /F must be set, command example: "chkdsk C: /F /X").
• /I - performs a less strict check of the index entries, CHKDSK performs a faster but less thorough check.
• /C - Skip checking cycles inside the folder structure.
• /L: size - change the size of the log to the value specified in kilobytes.
• /B - reset the scan results, re-scan the previously found bad sectors of the hard disk (the /R key is required, command example: "chkdsk C: /F /R /B").

In most cases, to check the file system and eliminate bad sectors on the hard drive, it is enough to use the "F" and "R" flags.

How to Disable Check Disk in CHKDSK on Windows Boot

In some cases, disk check starts when you turn on the computer, before loading the Windows operating system. In most cases, you need to wait until the end of the check, a restart will not follow.

A constant check of the disk every time the system starts, signals the presence of problems and the need to fix them. Perhaps you should consider replacing the hard drive. There are programs, for example, that constantly monitor the status of computer disks.

To disable Chkdsk from starting when Windows boot you can use 2 methods: change the values ​​in the registry of the operating system, or use command line.

Disable check disk on the command line:

1. Run command prompt as administrator.
2. In the command line interpreter window, enter the command ("C:" is the name of the drive on which you want to disable the launch of the disk check at system boot), and then press the "Enter" key:

chkntfs /x with:

• If you need to disable checking on multiple drives, add the corresponding drive letters to the command separated by spaces, for example, "chkntfs /x c: d:".
• Using the "chkntfs / d" command, you can return the original settings.

You can turn off automatic disk check when the operating system boots in the following way:

1. Launch the Registry Editor (type "regedit" in the search field, run the command).
2. Follow the path:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager

1. Click on the "Session Manager" option.
2. Find the parameter "BootExecute", click on it with the left mouse button.
3. The Edit MultiString window displays the default value.

1. To disable disk check during Windows startup, add a parameter before the asterisk:

autocheck autochk /k:C *

1. To disable scanning on multiple partitions, add drive letters separated by a space. Example for drives "C:" and "D:":

autocheck autochk /k:C /k:D *

Article Conclusions

The CHKDSK system application, built into the Windows operating system, is used to check the file system for errors and to detect bad sectors on the computer's hard drive. Using the utility, you can fix system errors and eliminate the negative impact (disable reading and writing) on ​​the system due to the presence of bad hard disk sectors.

The laser disc has undergone significant changes since its inception, evolving from a 650 megabyte CD to a large Blu-ray capable of storing up to 50 gigabytes and more. However, despite such obvious progress, the optical media has not gotten rid of many of the problems and shortcomings that have plagued it from the very beginning. For example, after burning another disc (even if the recording drive that was used was completely new), it is impossible to say with absolute certainty that all the data was correctly copied to the disc. Another inconvenience of working with optical media is related to the growing volume of information. It has become much more difficult to navigate on which of the disks to look for a particular program or document. And, finally, the most important "minuses" of a laser disc are data loss due to mechanical damage (scratched disc surface) or as a result of a write error. However, so far there is no serious alternative to optical media, so it is necessary to look for ways to solve these problems, at least partially. Utilities with which you can evaluate the status of disks and recover data from them will be discussed in today's review.

CDCheck 3.1

Developer: Mitja Perko
Distribution size: 1.5 MB
Spreading: shareware
Interface: English It is possible to draw a conclusion about the condition of a disc "by eye" only when obvious mechanical damage is visible on its surface, indicating careless handling of the media. The more scratched and dirty the working side of the disk, the higher the likelihood of failures when reading data from the media. But even if no cracks or scratches are found after the most thorough examination, this does not yet indicate that the data from the CD/DVD will be correctly read by the device. Recording errors can also occur as a result of a software failure or due to the failure of the recording device. Many people use a simple way to determine the quality of a recording - the media to be checked is inserted into the DVD drive, after which the data from it is copied to the hard drive. The logic of such a "test" is simple - if the data is copied, then the optical disk is in in perfect order. In fact this is not true. The fact that the data was copied to the hard disk only indicates that some information was read by the drive, but the fact that the copy process is completed does not guarantee that the data on the hard disk is completely identical to the data that was written to the media. You should also not rely entirely on comparing the sizes of the original and copied files - even if they match, the data may differ. It is inconvenient to manually compare data, especially when there are a lot of files on the media, so it is best to control the quality of recorded discs using a special utility such as CDCheck. One of the main functions of this utility is to determine the integrity of the data on the media. For this purpose, the program generates a checksum for files and folders, a code that is unique for a particular case, by which one can judge the reliability of a copy of the data.

CDCheck works with different types of checksums - MD2, MD4, MD5, Adler32, CRC32, SHA (1, 256, 348, 512), Tiger (128, 160, 192), etc. Before burning a disc, the program can analyze the contents of the future media on the subject of compatibility of data recorded on CD / DVD with ISO-image standards. Data verification can be performed both by checksum and by the "source-copy" principle. At the end of the scan, the program can launch an external anti-virus scanner, checking the content for viruses. CDCheck allows you to set the priority of a job, and also has the function of data recovery by repeatedly reading disk sectors. Upon reaching a certain percentage of reliability, which can be set in the program settings, the data can be considered recovered.

By processing the data with the CDCheck program, you can monitor the detailed statistics of the process: the average speed of reading data, the estimated time of data processing, the number of files and folders checked. The utility supports the command line and provides detailed information about the used CD/DVD/BD media.

DiskInternals CD & DVD Recovery 3.5

Developer: DiskInternals Research
Distribution size: 3.5 MB
Spreading: shareware
Interface: english The Lost Data Recovery Tool is one of a number of different data recovery tools offered by the developers of DiskInternals Research. This program can work with any optical media: from CD-R and DVR-R to dual-layer discs and DVD-RAM. CD & DVD Recovery finds "missing" files written in ISO9660, UDF and Joliet systems. This data can be recovered even if the data was written to the disk in multisession mode.

The operation of recovering damaged or deleted data is greatly simplified thanks to the step-by-step wizard that is included in the program. Following his instructions, you must select the media whose contents are not available, and then specify the parameters of the files to be restored. So, for example, for a more accurate data search result, you should determine the approximate size of the files being reanimated, as well as indicate the approximate time of their creation. These criteria are of particular importance when analyzing a rewritable disc that has many "traces" of old information once recorded on it. this medium. CD & DVD Recovery determines the location of the lost data on the disc and can work with long file names. The program provides access to files from any track, even if the session on the disk was not correctly closed.

CDRoller 8.0

Developer: Digital Atlantic Corp.
Distribution size: 6 MB
Spreading: shareware
Interface: english The problem of unreadable disks has led to the emergence of a mass of utilities created to solve it. Some programs are designed to test the quality of recording media, others - to read the surviving information. Typically, this uses the method of multiple reading, when the program tries to copy the data as accurately as possible from damaged disk. However, in practice, these utilities are not always able to save the situation. For example, if the copied file is large and contains one or more unreadable fragments, then such data may not be suitable for further use.

The simplest example of such a situation is a damaged DVD with a movie recorded on it. As you know, the content of the DVD-video format usually looks like the Video_ts folder, where the menu and navigation files are located, as well as large files with the .vob extension, which contain video and sound. If an unreadable area of ​​the disk ends up in the place where the vob file was written, this file will be partially damaged, resulting in the loss of a large fragment of the video. You can partially restore the remaining video. Firstly, for this you can use additional tools that can fix errors in the code of the video file. However, if the damaged area is large, then such utilities will not be able to cope with the recovery. Other programs capable of fixing the video file will use re-compression, which will inevitably lead to loss of original quality. The CDRoller utility can solve this problem faster and more efficiently than many other programs. After copying readable data from such a disk to the hard drive, CDRoller will analyze the vob file and divide it into separate fragments (movie scenes), saving them in the MPEG format familiar to the DVD video standard, without quality loss. In this case, you can simply exclude the scene with the fragment where the defect is present, and record new disk with surviving data.

Thanks to the built-in burning module, the procedure for burning a disc can be performed directly in the CDRoller. The program allows you to burn recovered files and folders, videos, as well as ISO image files.

The tool for cataloging discs built into the program uses the so-called short images (Short CD/DVD Image). In fact, these are not real images, but only data about the contents of the indexed disk - a list of all files and directories on the disk, with the structure preserved. Each time a new disc is read, the program can automatically create such a short image and write it to a certain folder, thus making up a library of all discs. In the future, if you need to quickly find a specific file, you can use CDRoller to search the entire library of images. The data search tool is very flexible, search query can be refined using various search criteria. For example, you can set the minimum and maximum size searched file, define the subject of the search (for example, only folders, files, or both), indicate the date of creation, etc. Another feature of CDRoller is the ability to work with audio CDs. Despite the relative durability of audio CDs, sometimes one tiny scratch is enough to stop a CD player from playing a particular track or even recognizing the disc. In order to save the recording, the program uses digital data reading (Digital Audio Extraction). The CDRoller can use jitter correction during the audio reading process, as well as apply sector rereading to detect errors or loss of synchronization. Readable tracks can be immediately converted to various digital audio formats - WAV, MP3, MP2, OGG, etc. The program can encode audio CDs on the fly, without creating an intermediate WAV file. In order to assess the quality of the optical media, CDRoller performs a series of tests (the test can be launched by selecting a drive from the list of available devices and using a keyboard shortcut), choosing a test method depending on the type of recorded data. The program checks file system ISO 9660, and also performs a disk surface check, after which it displays a detailed generated report on various media properties - the number of detected sessions, the program in which the recording was made, the size of the file allocation table, the list of unreadable folders, etc. d.

Please note that this check cannot be applied to disks with the UDF file system. Error detection on optical media with such a file system is performed automatically. This data recording format is widely used by various DVD camcorders, DVD recorders, and packet writing applications such as Roxio Drag-To-Disc and Nero InCD. Users who have to deal with such discs often encounter a situation where the captured and recorded video does not play back. Typically, data write errors occur during session close. They can be found when working with devices from various manufacturers - Lite-On, Thomson RCA, Philips, Panasonic, etc. In most cases, CDRoller allows you to partially or even completely restore this data.

ISOBuster 2.5

Developer: Smart Projects
Distribution size: 4.8 MB
Spreading: shareware
Interface: English This program is a versatile data recovery tool. Many users consider this utility to be the best tool for "fixing" unreadable data from optical discs, and, I must say, not without reason. The program is regularly updated, and the long list of its features grows from version to version. On the this moment IsoBuster can revive data from almost any media, including BD and HD DVDs.

The secret of IsoBuster's popularity lies primarily in the fact that this program understands all existing file systems that are used today for writing data. The utility works with the contents of images, with its help you can mount images and extract data from there, as well as directly run files. The program supports all formats popular programs for burning discs such as CDRWin, CloneCD, DiscJuggler, BlindWrite, WinOnCD, NTI, Plextools and many more. IsoBuster can also be used to create an exact image of the source disk, and the image can be written to .iso, .bin, .tao formats, created with cue markup and an .md5 checksum to determine data integrity.

The program allows you to check the status of the media (in this case, you can not even extract the data to the hard drive) and can compile lists of files containing reading errors. If the program detects bad sectors when reading a disk image, IsoBuster can collect statistics on bad areas of the disk and save it to a separate file. In the event that restrictions are imposed on the file system (for example, FAT), the created image files can be split into parts, the size of which is specified in the IsoBuster settings.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, there is no such way that would guarantee one hundred percent data protection on optical media. Therefore, there is nothing left but to handle the disk more carefully and always keep a backup copy of it "in reserve". Well, if despite the precautions taken, the trouble still occurred, the files from the disk are not copied or are not visible at all - it's time to try one of the described utilities for recovering information from the media. We wish you to use these programs only out of curiosity, and not out of necessity.