Sheep Test Guide

Sheep Test Guide
To copy the newest protections you really need to have a "Two Sheep" burner. But what is a two sheep burner and how can you tell. Well now you can following this guide to find out how good your drive is and so what it should be able to copy.

The first thing that you need to do is to download and unzip the test files. A copy of these files can be found here.

Once you have download and unzipped them go into the folder that you have placed them in. It should look like the first picture below. The different files in this folder can be used to test different things about your drive.


The different files can be used to test the following things.

• weak_sectors - The test file creator program. You don't run this one.
• sd2old - Creates a test file to check if a writer gets at least One Sheep.
• sd251 - Creates a test file to check if a writer gets at least Two Sheep.
• sd290 - Creates a test file to see if your writer can burn SafeDisc 2.90.
• bad - Creates a file containing bad patterns. Many 2-sheep writers will fail to copy this.
• sheep_3 - Creates a test file which contains all weak regular patterns. A writer which passes this test should be called a "Three Sheep" burner. Please note this creates a file which is greater than 400Mb so it may take a while.
• sheep_3_audio - Creates a test file which is plain audio. A writer which passes this test should be called a "Three Sheep" burner. Please note this creates a file which is greater than 528Mb so it may take a while.

To create your test file you need to double click on one of the program files. This will launch the program to create the test file. Here I have used sd251.



Once you have run the program file the following window will come up. This is just to tell you what file this program you are creating. You will need to hit a button to continue.



This window shows the test file being created. Once again you will need to hit a button to close the window.



If you now go back to the folder again you will see that a new file has been created. This is the file that you will need to burn to a CD to test your drive. You can burn multiple test files to a single CD to test all of the functions in one go if you want. You can also use a CDRW so that you don't waste a CD.



I am using Nero to burn this test file. To get to this screen, start up Nero and hit the New button or new under File. Here you need to select Start MultiSession Disc. Then click the ISO tab.



Under this tab you need to make sure that the Format is Mode 1. This is very important for the test to work properly. After you have selected the right format hit the New button.



You will be taken to the main windows of Nero. Here you need to find your test folder in the right hand two windows. The left hand two windows are your blank CD. Once you have found the test files copy the file over to the CD. You can do this by dragging and dropping the file or right clicking on it and selecting CopyTo Compilation option. Once you have done that find the Burn button and hit it. Once again you can select Burn Compilation under the Recorder menu to do the same thing.



This is the burning options window. Here you can select different options to do with your device. The default settings should be the best to use. Hit the Burn button when you are ready to burn the test files.



This is the burn window. This will tell you how long there is left for the process.



Once done this window will come up telling you that you can close down Nero.



The next thing to do is to bring up the CD window that you have just burnt. I have also brought up a window on the hard drive where I am going to copy the files to. All that you need to do here is to select your test file from your CD and copy it to your hard drive. If you have burnt more than one test file to your CD I would recommend copying them to your hard drive one by one.



If you copied the test file sd2old across then you have a One Sheep burner. If you copied the test file sd251 across then you have a Two Sheep burner. If you copied the test file sd290 then you have a drive capable of copying SafeDisc 2.90 and so on for the rest of the test files.

If however you tried to copy sdold across and got one of the following errors then you don't even have a One Sheep burner. The same goes for the rest of the test files.





Hopefully now you will be able to test your own drives to see what they will and won’t be able to copy.

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Last edited by Womble; 18-10-2006 at 14:54. Reason: Updated Link