[CALUG] CDwriters

Sat Dec 10 02:00:36 CST 2005

I'm lazy, I just use k3b (its a KDE program but works in Gnome) to write to my CD/DVD burners (on 3 differnt PCs), and I've never had a problem (except the one time I bought a stack of cheap media at Staples and had a 75% defective rate)
 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Bart Nielsen <blniels at softhome.net>
> I've got a 5 year old computer, and I've always envied the faster speeds
> with the newer CD writers.  (Mine would write at about 4x --- a little
> slower than the newer ones on the market today.  But I used to say "but
> it works well..." and let it go at that.)
> 
> Well --- it worked well till Monday.
> 
> I tried buying a DVD writer a few months ago (maybe 6), and found that:
> 
> * Yes, the firewire port works...(neat --- it was the first time I've
> had a firewire device to play with), as does the USB ports (I knew
> that), but the internal DVD writer didn't work as either an internal or
> an external device.  (It was suggested by my friends that perhaps
> getting the IDE traffic off the internal bus would speed up the
> processor and I'd get better performance.  I didn't realize you could
> turn a DVD+RW into a coaster --- I'm guessing it was the copy protection
> issues and there is section of the drive that they expect to be written
> exactly once.  So, when I wrote it poorly because my computer is slow,
> well, it was game over for that device...)
> 
> But it led me to believe that I didn't want to try that experiment again
> till I have a faster computer, which isn't happening right now.  Maybe
> in a few months...
> 
> 
> So I went to BEST BUY and bought a new writer.  They had two that looked
> like they would work --- and the Memorex writer was initially priced $
> 10 less than the Sony, and had 4x the buffer space, so it looked like a
> winner.
> 
> I've been using cdrecord to write the disks (all of the gui's tend to
> use that so fill in the name of your favorite gui here if it makes you
> feel any better), and readcd -c2scan to check the accuracy.  I had a
> much better disk with the new writer --- but it still wasn't perfect. 
> (It reported 0.000400 % errors --- which I figured would be less than
> 0.5 seconds for the 10 hours of MP3's that I had stored on the cd.)
> 
> Except when I actually listened to my CD, the errors were arranged such
> that I dropped some of the 10 minute tracks entirely --- so I lost a lot
> more than the raw numbers suggested I should.
> 
> 
> I just went back to BestBuy, and told them that I wanted to try
> something else.  They were really easy to work with --- even though I
> had already mailed in the rebate, they took back my box (I had trouble
> with that at CompUSA 5 years ago --- they sold me a Pacific Data
> CDwriter that was usb based for my wife's mac, and when I finally
> openned it, there was a note that said "yup --- we know we said it would
> work, but it won't".  For a month, they still thought it would, but
> after that, they wouldn't even admit that it might work some time.   But
> they wouldn't take it back because I had asked for a rebate, thus, I
> didn't have the scan code --- and, well, anyone want a rarely used
> USB-based (usb1) CD writer?  It's been resting at my home since then.
> 
> 
> So, the other writer is a Sony writer --- same specs, but it has 25% of
> the buffer space.  I don't have a lot of experience with the new drive,
> but the result of readcd -c2scan was 'better' than I've seen for any of
> my other drives as of late, namely:
> 
> 
> CDB:  BE 00 00 04 91 D3 00 00 2E FA 00 00
> status: 0x2 (CHECK CONDITION)
> Sense Bytes: 70 00 05 00 00 00 00 0A 00 00 00 00 64 00 00 00
> Sense Key: 0x5 Illegal Request, Segment 0
> Sense Code: 0x64 Qual 0x00 (illegal mode for this track) Fru 0x0
> Sense flags: Blk 0 (not valid) 
> cmd finished after 0.063s timeout 40s
> readcd: Input/output error. Cannot read source disk
> readcd: Retrying from sector 299475.
> .............................................
> readcd: Input/output error. Error on sector 299519 not corrected. Total
> of 1 errors.
> readcd: -noerror set, continuing ...
> .
> readcd: Input/output error. Error on sector 299520 not corrected. Total
> of 2 errors.
> readcd: -noerror set, continuing ...
> addr:   299521
> Time total: 210.412sec
> Read 773957.58 kB at 3678.3 kB/sec.
> Total of 2 hard read errors.
> C2 errors total: 0 bytes in 0 sectors on disk
> C2 errors rate: 0.000000% 
> C2 errors on worst sector: 0, sectors with 100+ C2 errors: 0
> 
> real	3m30.832s
> user	0m0.668s
> sys	0m3.591s
> 
> 
> I tried mounting both my iso image in loop back mode and the new drive,
> and then running diff against both file systems:
> 
> time diff -r . /media/dvd
> 
> real	5m13.197s
> user	0m3.208s
> sys	0m30.989s
> 
> 
> So, it looks better than what I saw before.
> 
> I read the image in with dd:
> 
> time dd if=/dev/dvd of=xxx.iso
> dd: reading `/dev/dvd': Input/output error
> 1198080+0 records in
> 1198080+0 records out
> 
> real	4m53.773s
> user	0m2.151s
> sys	1m7.999s
> 
> 
> and while the input file (iso-10.iso) and the output file (xxx.iso) are
> slightly different:
> 
> 613414912 versus
> 613416960 bytes
> 
> cmp -b xxx.iso iso-10.iso
> cmp: EOF on iso-10.iso
> linux:> 
> 
> 
> It looks like those differences aren't significant.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I wondered if anyone else had experience with this sort of thing.  If
> the CDwriter mostly works, I'm going to drop it --- but I'm surprised
> that a drive with a smaller buffer is doing a better job than a drive
> with a larger buffer.  (Maybe skill in using the buffer makes more
> difference than the buffer size itself?)
> 
> Comments?  (It looks like, for my system, today, I'm happier with the
> Sony drive --- but which drive would you buy, and why?  I opted against
> a DVD writer combo because I anticipate that when I want to do that,
> I'll buy a complete system that has a DVD/CDwriter integrated, and the
> extra $ 10 - 50 wouldn't ever be recouped by me because I'll never be
> able to use the added functionality (unless I really want to turn more
> DVD's into coasters...)
> 
> Bart.
> 
> 
> 
> 
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