Fussy drives are great for scanning media!

Blank Media
#1

Well, plenty of you probably think, duh of course fussy drives are good for TRT’ing media. This topic is going to cover a couple things though.

First of all, I got some scratch proof verbatim media a while ago. Surprisingly, one of my discs got a scratch on it! I can feel it with my fingernail so it is not small but doesn’t look serious. Anyways it has affected the playback of the disc. So first lesson = don’t be careless with scratch proof media, treat them like any media carefully because they aren’t that much more scratch proof. It’s just good to be able to wipe off dust and whatnot and not cause any scratches on the disc.

Now I scanned the disc with my (new but still crappy) liteon and it showed a massive chunk of PIF. TRT with LG works fine, TRT in Liteon works fine. Every drive I have TRTs it fine except for… Pics are below. After seeing this, my trust in drives like the Pioneer for TRT has doubled. Definitely keep any aging Pioneer drives, 109s 110 111 etc, don’t throw it out if it gets funny or you find newer drives. They make a good TRT tester indeed :iagree: .

#2

You highlight the importance of choosing a good drive for TRT testing :iagree: Not all drives are equally useful for read testing, same as is already well accepted for digital error scanning.

#3

Yes, choosing the proper drive(s) for TRT testing is important.

There are many types of trouble a disc can have however, so one drive may be fussy about some types of probles while another drive is fussy about other types of problems.

Examples:
My NEC, Optiarc and Pioneer drives are fussy in general about bad burns, the same is true for my Plextor PX-712 but that might be because it’s far more fussy than other drives of the same model. The same discs can be TRT scanned in my BenQ and LiteOn drives with flawless results.

My LiteOn drives and especially my BenQ DW1655 drives are fussy about certain re-linking points created by NEC 4551, Optiarc 7173 (now dead) and Matshita 840 drives. The BenQ 1655 is completely unable to read some sectors while the LiteOn drives merely have problems reading those sectors and slow down or fail during a TRT. The same discs have flawless TRTs in my other drives.

So my point is that even though you have found a drive that is fussy about some problems, don’t expect it to be able to detect all kinds of problems.

#4

Talking of TRTs…I had to remove my Sammy and put in my NEC because I need it for doing TRTs :sad:

#5

Sadly, this is very true. :frowning:

I burn lots of DVDR discs for demonstration purposes, and even some that had been heavily tested in my pickiest drives turned out to have reading issues in some standalone players. :rolleyes:

Thankfully, for my own discs and players, I can trust my current testing method, though I don’t expect it to be 100% foolproof. These days I use mostly TRTs in a NEC 4550 + @8X Quikscans in a LiteOn 16P1S DVD-ROM. Yes, @8X (surprised? :bigsmile: ), as this drive is pickier @8X than at higher speeds… go figure why, and frankly I don’t care why, I’m just thankful that it can predict the behaviour of my discs in my own standalone players much better than my previous scanning drives did at any speed… :cool:

#6

Well, I definitely wouldn’t count on my 111L to detect everything funny on a disc. That wouldn’t be a smart move however, I am seeing a trend lately - it seems that discs which show really high PIF at high speeds, fail TRT in my pioneer. This doesn’t mean the pioneer will always fail on a disc that has high PIF with 16x but just see these results:

Burned with H22N @18x.

H22N @ 18x.png645×531 43.8 KB

H22N @ 18x 16x scan.png645×531 43.9 KB

H22N @ 18x 111L TRT.png645×531 41 KB