Need advice on hard drive/optical drive testing software

I have a DVD player that's running strong after about 10 years. I had a CD player that was running strong after 10 years and it only stopped being used because it was replaced by the DVD player.

Can someone please explain the so called "short life" of optical lasers?

Short life for lasers and most media, apparently:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_disc_recording_technologies

"Retail recordable/writable optical media contain dyes in/on the optical media to record data, whereas factory-manufactured optical media use physical "pits" created by plastic molds/casts. As a result, data storage on retail optical media does not have the life-span of factory-manufactured optical media. The problem is exacerbated because as the writing laser of the recorder is used, its power output drops with age - typically after just a few years. Consequently, a disc written with a laser that is nearing the end of its useful life may not have a readable life that is long as if a new laser had been used.

Dye based optical media should not be solely relied on to archive valuable data. MAM-A (Mitsui) claims a life of 300 years on their archival gold CD-R and 100 years for gold DVDs. Good alternatives would be to additionally backup one's media using other media technologies and/or investing in non-volatile memory technologies.^[5]"

I think we went over this in another thread earlier this year.

Apple doesn't date these things. Every now and then I'll get an e-mail notice about someone responding to a thread that's ancient. The dates are easy to overlook as well.

If you use the search function the list of items returned is not in newest first by default. I did a search and ironically hit this thread. If I configure the searches on the left you can get latest first etc. I would have thought this would have been the default.

Even if it's old why restart a thread if there's information of value in it.

Nobody ever really did come up or identify any good way to test an optical drive, aside from putting a DVD or CD in and seeing if it will play. Are there no obvious tell-tale sings like there are with hard drives?

On writable optical drives the laser probably dies long before the unit can even begin showing signs of mechanical malfunction. The only place I could see being able to acquire longevity data on optical drives would be with a read-only device that has a laser that may last much, much longer.

Has anyone done it? Not the the best of my knowledge. It's actually sort of too bad, too, because with the short lifespan of some optical drives (R/WR type) I suppose everyone thinks its trivial and I suppose a manufacturer could go ahead and start assembling low quality units simply because many people are just willing to accept the short lifespan as "normal." It makes it difficult to tell if someone is buying a junk unit or something good.

You can't really test something where a primary component, namely the media itself, is always changing. You would almost need a pristine test disk to use for read only tests that could be used from drive to drive, and that would also depend on that media itself not being damaged or scratched.

In other words, a decent test is likely impossible.

A test might be "impossible" for a regular user but I suspect the engineers and designers know full well how to test them. I've never in my life heard of some device being manufactured without being tested extensively. A way to test them does exist.

That may be true, but the odds are that the media will be bad or the optics have failed. In either case it's a no-go. There's no reason to suspect the mechanicals of an optical drive would be really any worse than they would be for a hard drive. Why do I say that? Because a lot of read-only optical drives, like CDROM or DVDROM players last a long, long time. Never the less, if they suffer damage it's usually to the optics.

The only way I could see someone testing these would be with a designated test disk and using the thing in a controlled, clean evironment, like a clean room. Why? That's the only way you could limit external factors, like dust getting into the disk chamber from mucking things up.

Why waste time dealing with optical drives. Honda announced they're not even going to be putting optical drives in their cars anymore. When was the last time Apple made a unit with an optical in it? With the right type of high quality media and drives it might be OK as an archiver, but for most people this is a dead technology.

The title of the thread suggests recommendations for hard drive/optical drive testing software, not "why bother testing [what someone may think is] obsolete technology."

I still use CDs and DVDs alot. They're not dead.

I can see why someone would want to test an actual disc to se if it was any good, but this conversation seems to have turned into one focusing on the control mechanisms as well. Why bother? If everyone is stopping the use of them, and it looks that way to me, why even waste time looking at the issue.

To find out if they're working right. 😁😁😁

On what? A read only device like a DVD-ROM or CD-ROM? Does anyone even make them anymore?