[ale] DVD media/hardware tests

[Dow Hurst]

Questions:
Is there any reason to believe that certain polling 
processes like "autorun" on RH 9 can cause problems in 
burning CD/DVD discs?

Has anyone run into media speed or composite coating 
difference causing media read or seek errors between 
different DVD drives?

Will polling processes in Gnome or KDE cause problems with 
ripping, encoding, and playback of music?  Funky random 
dropouts throughout playback or regular problems such a 
blips or distortion that is repeatable on playback and seem 
to have been part of the ripping encoding process?

What are the best quality most consistent DVD and CD media 
on the market?  What would you bank your data on?

Explanation:

I've worked a little more on the problem I've had with 
burning DVD discs reliably.  Thanks for the posts on which 
device files represent the hardware!  I am using /dev/scd0 
and have checked the links on both DVD burners for /dev/dvd 
or /dev/cdrecorder depending on whether I am under SuSE 9 or 
RH9.  Now what I have found so far is that an initial set of 
10 pack DVD-R 2x discs from "Hypermedia k" seem to have 
media errors, more with any drive other than the 2x LaCie 
firewire burner which does give some errors.  I only had 
X-CDRoast and dvdrecord for creating and burning the data 
under RH 9.  The errors look like this when reading from a 
DVD-ROM drive one of the HypermediaK 2x disc:

Jan 13 15:13:04 knife kernel: SCSI cdrom error : host 0 
channel 0 id 0 lun 0 return code = 8000002
Jan 13 15:13:04 knife kernel: Info fld=0x1bef37 (nonstd), 
FMK Current sd0b:00: sense key Medium Error
Jan 13 15:13:04 knife kernel: Additional sense indicates 
Unrecovered read error
Jan 13 15:13:04 knife kernel:  I/O error: dev 0b:00, sector 
7322844

These repeat for each sector found as unreadable.


Here is an example from the LaCie 2x burner and not the 
DVD-ROM on the same system:

Jan 13 15:44:46 knife kernel: SCSI cdrom error : host 0 
channel 0 id 0 lun 0 return code = 8000002
Jan 13 15:44:46 knife kernel: Info fld=0x1bfb0f (nonstd), 
FMK Current sd0b:00: sense key Hardware Error
Jan 13 15:44:46 knife kernel: Additional sense indicates 
Track following error
Jan 13 15:44:46 knife kernel:  I/O error: dev 0b:00, sector 
7334972
Jan 13 15:44:49 knife kernel: SCSI cdrom error : host 0 
channel 0 id 0 lun 0 return code = 8000002
Jan 13 15:44:49 knife kernel: Info fld=0x1bfaf0 (nonstd), 
FMK Current sd0b:00: sense key Medium Error
Jan 13 15:44:49 knife kernel: Additional sense indicates 
Unrecovered read error
Jan 13 15:44:49 knife kernel:  I/O error: dev 0b:00, sector 
7334848


Now the Memorex 50 pack DVD-R 4x discs don't have errors 
that I can tell on certain drives.  These discs were 
successfully burned and verified by K3B under SUSE 9 on the 
LaCie 4x IDE burner on the initial write.  I can create a 
tar file from the disc and verify the archive of the files 
on the DVD using my Lite-On DVD-ROM under SuSE 9 at home.  I 
can do the same on a Dell I-8500 laptop.  But, on my Dell RH 
9 system, the DVD-ROM drive gives media errors on some files 
on that same 4x DVD disc.  I haven't yet tried the 2x LaCie 
firewire burner on the same RH 9 system.  I am trying to be 
systematic here and make sure I've tried each drive 
available on each media type.  Plus, I am trying discs with 
the errors I've seen already and looking for repeats on 
other drives and OS when attempting to read.

Since I've got a single 4x Verbatim disc that came with the 
4x drive that has shown no problems on the SuSE systems: 
laptop, home desktop, lab desktop w/4x burner, I am trying 
it on the RH 9 DVD-ROM right now.

Thanks for any ideas and help on getting a reliable set of 
burns on reliable media.  I need to be able to count on the 
quality of the data on the discs.  TIA,
Dow


PS. Hardware setup:

Dell 360n P4 2.8GHz w/Hyperthreading enabled
LaCie 2x firewire external DVD-R/RW/RAM
Dell DVD-ROM
1Gb RAM
RH 9.0 running default RedHat KDE install (Gnomed KDE?)
2.4.20-24.9smp

Dell Optiplex GX1 PII 350MHz
LaCie 4x internal IDE DVD+/-R/RW
Dell CD-ROM
256Mb RAM
SuSE 9.0 running default KDE install
2.4.21-99-default

Dell I-8500 P4 2.0GHz
Dell DVD-ROM/CD-R/RW
1Gb RAM
SuSE 8.2 running default KDE install
EmperorLinux kernel 2.4.20-emp-2420p6a0328s

Homebuilt Athlon XP 1800 1.5GHz
LiteOn DVD-ROM
512Mb RAM
SuSE 9.0 running default KDE install
2.4.2x-athlon  (not sure if 20 or 21)


PPS.  Sorry for the long post!



-- 
__________________________________________________________
Dow Hurst                  Office: 770-499-3428            *
Systems Support Specialist    Fax: 770-423-6744            *
1000 Chastain Rd. Bldg. 12                                 *
Chemistry Department SC428  Email:   dhurst at kennesaw.edu   *
Kennesaw State University         Dow.Hurst at mindspring.com *
Kennesaw, GA 30144                                         *
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