R.K.Orion

Q: Need advice on hard drive/optical drive testing software

I've been tasked to sell some of our inventory of old Macs. This include some PowerPC based PowerBooks, a few G5 dual core Power Macs, but mostly they're going to be MacBook Pro's, iMacs, and Mac Mini's. I'm paying most attention to the Intel stuff because most of the PPC stuff is just getting a little too old. NOTE: I am not on here to announce a sale. Please do not ask me where, when, and if the units will be sold. I don't want this thread turning into a spam-fest!

 

Most of the Intel units have CoreDuo processessors, some of the mini's I believe actually have Core Solo. These are all being upgraded to new systems, as you might guess. All units have their original software because when these are given to an employee to use we take the software and lock it in a file cabinet, which prevents them from losing it or doing something else with it. We have fairly tight control over our machines. I do not believe any of these units are capable of running Lion or later OSes due to their processors. Most systems are running Leopard or Snow Leopard.

 

In any case, we can do basic hardware tests on the units using AHT, but AHT seems to have little or no testing capability for doing surface scans on hard drives or optical drives. These are, ironically, the most likely things that will break. We want it verified these are in working order because we will be offering a limited warranty on them.

 

What's available for testing hard drives and optical drives?

 

As an FYI, having Apple do this testing is out of the question due to cost.

Posted on Sep 28, 2013 6:29 PM

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Q: Need advice on hard drive/optical drive testing software

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  • by ZV137,

    ZV137 ZV137 Jan 9, 2015 12:57 AM in response to HuntsMan75
    Level 1 (54 points)
    Jan 9, 2015 12:57 AM in response to HuntsMan75

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

  • by HuntsMan75,

    HuntsMan75 HuntsMan75 Jan 10, 2015 1:07 PM in response to ZV137
    Level 1 (14 points)
    Jan 10, 2015 1:07 PM in response to ZV137

    Yes, that would be a good example, because some of them are quite capable of lasting years. I had a CDROM player that lasted almost 15 years and it was used often. Just because the optics on R/W units fail doesn't mean others aren't worth testing.

  • by CaptH,

    CaptH CaptH Jan 14, 2015 11:33 AM in response to HuntsMan75
    Level 1 (59 points)
    Jan 14, 2015 11:33 AM in response to HuntsMan75

    Give it up guys. Optical drives are basically a thing of the past. There isn't any software that will do a thorough job testing them for consumers, and no one is going to develop software for something that's not going to be in any systems in two years.

  • by ThomasB2010,

    ThomasB2010 ThomasB2010 Jan 15, 2015 11:27 AM in response to CaptH
    Level 1 (13 points)
    Jan 15, 2015 11:27 AM in response to CaptH

    They may be a thing of the past but they're still used. I have a bunch of DVD-RW, with a "-" deliberately, that I recorded 10 years ago. They get pretty frequent use and they all are readable. Not one single one of them has failed.

  • by ZV137,

    ZV137 ZV137 Jan 18, 2015 12:22 PM in response to ThomasB2010
    Level 1 (54 points)
    Jan 18, 2015 12:22 PM in response to ThomasB2010

    ThomasB2010 wrote:

     

    They may be a thing of the past but they're still used. I have a bunch of DVD-RW, with a "-" deliberately, that I recorded 10 years ago. They get pretty frequent use and they all are readable. Not one single one of them has failed.

    I would say you've had extraordinary luck. Were those burned on a Mac, PC, or an actual recorder.

     

    I have yet to see one of these slim line optical drives last more than a year.

  • by CaptH,

    CaptH CaptH Jan 20, 2015 11:39 AM in response to ThomasB2010
    Level 1 (59 points)
    Jan 20, 2015 11:39 AM in response to ThomasB2010

    About 10 years ago there was a wave of DVD video recorders put on the market by virtually every manufacturer. Within 3 years nearly every single one of them had been pulled off the market because the lenses were burning out. Companies that were typically getting 4 and 5 star ratings were getting 1's. You must have done your burning with one of these. May I be so bold as to guess....did it even last 3 years?

     

    Maybe your DVD player/burner/whatever put out some good DVDs but that's probably all it did. I'm going to assume it's dead. You can get an USB flash drive to store information on and not have the problems you do with optical drives.

     

    As I said before, pursuing this path is somewhat pointless.

  • by ThomasB2010,

    ThomasB2010 ThomasB2010 Jan 21, 2015 10:45 AM in response to CaptH
    Level 1 (13 points)
    Jan 21, 2015 10:45 AM in response to CaptH

    The point isn't whether or not they're obsolete the point is how do you test one, especially for mechanical problems. Has it occurred to you that someone like me with old and usable optical media may still like to keep the media usable? If it stick it into a failing optical drive will the drive's heads scrape across the surface of the media ruining it. I think the question is worth asking.

  • by MrJavaDeveloper,

    MrJavaDeveloper MrJavaDeveloper Jan 22, 2015 1:41 AM in response to ThomasB2010
    Level 1 (64 points)
    Jan 22, 2015 1:41 AM in response to ThomasB2010

    The only place you may find testing products for optical drives to do the type of testing you seem interested in is probably from the manufacturer. Don't be terribly surprised if the utilities are DOS-only.

  • by CaptH,

    CaptH CaptH Jan 22, 2015 11:40 AM in response to CaptH
    Level 1 (59 points)
    Jan 22, 2015 11:40 AM in response to CaptH

    CaptH wrote:

     

    About 10 years ago there was a wave of DVD video recorders put on the market by virtually every manufacturer. Within 3 years nearly every single one of them had been pulled off the market because the lenses were burning out. Companies that were typically getting 4 and 5 star ratings were getting 1's. You must have done your burning with one of these. May I be so bold as to guess....did it even last 3 years?

     

    Maybe your DVD player/burner/whatever put out some good DVDs but that's probably all it did. I'm going to assume it's dead. You can get an USB flash drive to store information on and not have the problems you do with optical drives.

     

    As I said before, pursuing this path is somewhat pointless.

     

    I think you mean lasers, not lenses. In any case I remember that because I was considering buying one. Every single brand was getting 1 star ratings from companies that normally get 4 or 5 out of 5.

     

    Java developer is right. Check with manufacturers. Odds are too, they'll be DOS applications, and probably MS-DOS at that (not full blown Windows).

  • by CaptH,

    CaptH CaptH Jan 23, 2015 12:43 AM in response to CaptH
    Level 1 (59 points)
    Jan 23, 2015 12:43 AM in response to CaptH

    CaptH wrote:

     

    I think you mean lasers, not lenses...

     

    Correction: That should have read "I think I meant to say lasers, not lenses…"

     

    Proof that it pays to read before posting, which I obviously didn't do.

  • by ThomasB2010,

    ThomasB2010 ThomasB2010 Jan 23, 2015 11:44 AM in response to MrJavaDeveloper
    Level 1 (13 points)
    Jan 23, 2015 11:44 AM in response to MrJavaDeveloper

    Well, there are some:

     

    1. Opti Drive Control (Windows)

    2. InfinaDyne CD/DVD Diagnotics (Windows)

    3. CDRoller (Windows)

     

    I would have provided links, but they're all Windows so why bother. Other searches are yielding  forums with results similar to this one with comments ranging from "why bother, they're cheap, just replace the drive" to "why bother at all with optical."

     

    One of those packages above can theoretically recover data from a bad optical. That would be a nice feature to have. To the best of my knowledge nothing like it exists on Macs.

  • by CaptH,

    CaptH CaptH Jan 25, 2015 1:09 PM in response to ThomasB2010
    Level 1 (59 points)
    Jan 25, 2015 1:09 PM in response to ThomasB2010

    Data recovery from a bad optical drive would be an asset to anyone considering how many of them go bad so easily. No such thing for Mac's to the best of my knowledge.

  • by ZV137,

    ZV137 ZV137 Jan 27, 2015 12:03 PM in response to CaptH
    Level 1 (54 points)
    Jan 27, 2015 12:03 PM in response to CaptH

    You could try this for optical drive recovery:

     

    http://www.stellarinfo.com/mac-software/cd-dvd-recovery-mac.php

     

    Read the fine print about the "free" download because it states it's only a demo version. I'm not familiar with their stuff. I took a look at their store and it looks like they're porting that product to every platform on Earth (Sco Open Server? Seriously?) with prices that range from tens of dollars to hundreds of dollars.

     

    So……if you're really interested in pursuing this "optical drive testing" topic to the ends of the Earth, and I'm not, there ya go!!

  • by ThomasB2010,

    ThomasB2010 ThomasB2010 Jan 28, 2015 11:37 AM in response to ZV137
    Level 1 (13 points)
    Jan 28, 2015 11:37 AM in response to ZV137

    They have a long list of products, and some of the information is confusing. In the Mac Section they have a "Mac Data Recovery" product that claims it can restore deleted files.

     

    Is this possible with an SSD? I know that on an HDD the drive can delete a block by simply leaving the contents in place and then marking the data as available, so it's there. On an SSD the block has to be completely wiped and most SSD, I believe, do this during their cleanup operations. Depending on the SSD that wouldn't give someone much time to recover data I would think.

  • by MrJavaDeveloper,

    MrJavaDeveloper MrJavaDeveloper Jan 28, 2015 6:07 PM in response to ThomasB2010
    Level 1 (64 points)
    Jan 28, 2015 6:07 PM in response to ThomasB2010

    I think that with SSDs you're going to find that a lot of the tools and options in old products like TechTool Pro and Drive Genius won't work that well on SSDs. I'm not familiar with Stellar Phoenix at all so I couldn't comment. I also doubt, however, that hard drives are going to disappear from the market any time soon simply because of the cost of SSDs. It's just too cheap to not use a hard drive for backups, and if you keep decent backups, you won't need to worry about recovery anyway.

     

    Just make sure the backup drive doesn't crash!

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