Testing Media Quality - Page 5

Disc Inspector

Disc Inspector ,by ECI, is no longer being sold. It supported a variety of formats and options. Under the CD-Tools menu, we can find the "Test Disc" menu. Test Disc tests the selected disc in a range specified by the user. It includes the tests of Error Correction Code (ECC) and Error Detection Code (EDC) by generating ECC/EDC codes from user data. As an option, Test Disc can perform the post-gap test at the same time.

Test Disc will test three areas of the Data and Audio discs:

• Test Post-gap - This test checks the end of the data track to verify that at least 150 sectors (2 seconds) have all zeroes in them. It will count how many post-gap sectors exist.
• ECC - This test generates the error correction code (ECC) based on user data and compares it to the ECC area on the disc. A user of your CD-R disc may not notice the failure of the ECC data during normal read operation. When the user encounters a read error of the disc, there will be no recovery option available.
• EDC - This test generates the error detection code (EDC) based on user data and compares it to the EDC area on the disc. Failures of EDC data on CD-R media are SERIOUS problem. The ECC logic of the CD-ROM drive may correct data, but the read operation becomes slower.

The software will work with new drives, but from our tests, it worked better with the Plextor PX-40TS.