I'm using PlexToosl with my PX-708A [1.06] to extract audio CDs and it seems to be a great combination. However, my 708A occasionally chugs on some data CDs, sometimes griding to what seems nearly a halt. I have a few CD-R data discs (Mitsui silver) that cause serious slowage on some parts, and even a few commercial ones (my original WinXP installation disc, for example, causes severe slowing near the end).

Testing these CDs in PlexTools causes the same slowing as copying them to the HD, but no errors are reported.

These "trouble" CDs have no visible defects and do not cause other drives to slow down, which is why I'm concerned that my Plextor might be losing its mind. My LG at work and older W1610 don't seem to slow down at all on the same CDs. Of course this could just mean the 708A is being more paranoid near trouble spots, but I would like to know if there is a way to analyze a CD to verify that there really are trouble spots. I don't want to rip 300 more CDs only to discover that my drive is flaky.

Nero CDspeed. It comes with Nero Burning ROM.

You can also use PlexTools' QCheck C1/C2 test, if your drive supports it. Or Read Transfer rate, if it doesn't.

Download Nero CD Speed as music_man_mpc suggested.

Open Nero CD Speed, select the drive the CD is in, and go to Extra > ScanDisc.

ScanDisc will tell you which sectors on your CD are good, damaged, or unreadable by your CD drive.

Extras > CD Quality will give you a quality score depending on how well your drive read the disc.

ScanDisc provides more detailed information on how damaged/unreadable the disc is. ScanDisc is the test you want to use to find 'trouble spots'.

Thanks! Exactly the tool I was looking for. Though I must say I'm more confused than ever. I'm not sure how a CD that slows the drive from 30x to 3x can be 100%:



The file and surface scan (ScanDisc) exhibited the same slowing but reported no problems. This is a mystery; the drive always slows down at the same spot, so it looks like a media problem, but other drives don't slow down on this CD and CDSpeed gives it a clean bill of health. Maybe I just have a schizo 708A.

Optical disc drives sometimes show a strange behaviour when running into errors ... maybe your CD shows focusing/tracking errors which cause the drive to slow down during the read process - as long as data integrity is still maintained, this should not cause you any trouble.

Of course, different drives with different chipsets will react differently upon these situations ...

Well, I borrowed a friend's brand new 708A and stuck it in my PC. I then tried to run another CDSpeed read test so I could compare the results to the curve I posted earlier. Same CD (original WinXP installation CD). Same computer. Same everything except a new 708A.

The new 708A I borrowed (which still had firmware 1.04 from the factory) choked entirely on the disc! It slowed to 2-3x immediately, thrashed for a while, and about 1/3 of the way through the disc gave me some cryptic "marker not found, disc unreadable" error.

I upgraded to firmware 1.06 and (get this) the drive read the disc, though it generated a very ugly curve and seemed to struggle much more than my 708A.

In short, I still have no idea what the problem is, but my 708A dealt with it more gracefully than the new one, so I'm keeping it. But I'm still bothered that (a) firmware can make the difference between a readable disc and outright failure and that (b) the 708A seems to slow down severly when faced with discs that don't seem to bother other readers at all (like the LG I tried and my old w1610).

CDSpeed can't read the information about C1 errors from your drive. All that you will see is very severe errors (C2).
C1 errors, that gives you an idea about the reading quality, can be displayed by Plextools, with the appropriate Plextor drives (I don't know which ones). It can also be displayed by KProbe, with some (all ?) LiteOn drives.
These tools don't give you an accurate analysis of the CD quality, but only of the reading quality, which depends much on the CD, speed, and drive. But it is already helpful.