[gentoo-user] Software for checking CDs and DVDs for errors?

[gentoo-user] Software for checking CDs and DVDs for errors?

[Pouru Lasse]

I've got a bunch of scratched disc-based games (PS2, Xbox 360) that I'd
like to check for errors. Is there any program for Linux that does this?
I found and tried dvdisaster, but it only works for CDs, not
DVDs. Everything else seems to be Windows-only.

- Lasse

Re: [gentoo-user] Software for checking CDs and DVDs for errors?

[Francesco Turco]

On Mon, Dec 3, 2018, at 17:27, Pouru Lasse wrote:
> I've got a bunch of scratched disc-based games (PS2, Xbox 360) that I'd
> like to check for errors. Is there any program for Linux that does this?
> I found and tried dvdisaster, but it only works for CDs, not
> DVDs. Everything else seems to be Windows-only.

ddrescue?

-- 
https://fturco.gitlab.io/

Re: [gentoo-user] Software for checking CDs and DVDs for errors?

[Joerg Schilling]

Francesco Turco <fturco@fastmail.fm> wrote:

> ddrescue?

Are you sure this helps?

From the name, it sounds like it does not understand SCSI level, but this is 
required for best recovery results, as the problems usually are in the bad 
implementation at the drivers at kernel level.

Jörg

-- 
 EMail:joerg@schily.net                    (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
    joerg.schilling@fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL: http://cdrecord.org/private/ http://sf.net/projects/schilytools/files/'

Re: [gentoo-user] Software for checking CDs and DVDs for errors?

[Jack]

On 2018.12.03 11:27, Pouru Lasse wrote:
> I've got a bunch of scratched disc-based games (PS2, Xbox 360) that  
> I'd
> like to check for errors. Is there any program for Linux that does  
> this?
> I found and tried dvdisaster, but it only works for CDs, not
> DVDs. Everything else seems to be Windows-only.

I have not installed dvdisaster, but I'd be really surprised if it  
won't check dvd's.  The ebuild description is "Tool for creating error  
correction data (ecc) for optical media (DVD, CD, BD)" so if it really  
balks at a dvd, I'd file a bug.

Also - what is your criteria for finding an error?  Could you just read  
the entire disk or copy to /dev/null and just look for any read  
errors?  (I'm not sure if I'd try cp or dd or some variant on dd.)

Jack

Re: [gentoo-user] Software for checking CDs and DVDs for errors?

[Dale]

Jack wrote:
> On 2018.12.03 11:27, Pouru Lasse wrote:
>> I've got a bunch of scratched disc-based games (PS2, Xbox 360) that I'd
>> like to check for errors. Is there any program for Linux that does this?
>> I found and tried dvdisaster, but it only works for CDs, not
>> DVDs. Everything else seems to be Windows-only.
>
> I have not installed dvdisaster, but I'd be really surprised if it
> won't check dvd's.  The ebuild description is "Tool for creating error
> correction data (ecc) for optical media (DVD, CD, BD)" so if it really
> balks at a dvd, I'd file a bug.
>
> Also - what is your criteria for finding an error?  Could you just
> read the entire disk or copy to /dev/null and just look for any read
> errors?  (I'm not sure if I'd try cp or dd or some variant on dd.)
>
> Jack
>


I was wondering if the checksums could be checked?  If the OP can find
the checksum for the DVD as it comes from the factory, then he could
check what he has against that.  Question is, is that info even
available or does it vary over batches of DVDs?  If it varies, it may
not be possible to test that way even if checksums are available. 

Thing that makes this different for the OP, a damaged audio or even a
video DVD can be corrected sometimes within the player itself.  I know
audio can and has done so for ages.  Video maybe, maybe not.  I suspect
video game DVDs fall more into the category of a data disk tho.  A
scratch may not be a problem with audio but when it comes to data, it
could be broken completely. 

Another thought, maybe if one is bad the maker would replace for a small
fee?? 

Just throwing that out there in case checksums are available and it
could be done that way.  Sort of doubt it tho. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Software for checking CDs and DVDs for errors?

[Andrew Udvare]

[-- Attachment #1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1360 bytes --]

On 03/12/2018 17:50, Dale wrote:
> Jack wrote:
> 
> I was wondering if the checksums could be checked?  If the OP can find
> the checksum for the DVD as it comes from the factory, then he could
> check what he has against that.  Question is, is that info even
> available or does it vary over batches of DVDs?  If it varies, it may
> not be possible to test that way even if checksums are available. 
> 
> Just throwing that out there in case checksums are available and it
> could be done that way.  Sort of doubt it tho. 

Checksums do exist. The Redump project is trying to collect all relevant
disc information for every video game ever made, basically.

http://redump.org/disc/57802/

The process to generate this information is very specific and requires
software that isn't made for Linux unfortunately. But the MD5, CRC32,
SHA1 is there which can be usually be checked with `dd /dev/sr0 |
sha1sum` for a basic disc.

PS1 and PS2 games can be checked without special hardware in this case,
but for others, specific hardware is required.

In my case I have a JTAG Xbox 360, so the best way for me to check a
game is to have my Xbox 360 dump the disc contents entirely with an app
that would not be available on a normal Xbox 360. If this fails at any
point it's a bad disc (or it needs cleaning/repair).

-- 
Andrew


[-- Attachment #2: OpenPGP digital signature --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 833 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-user] Software for checking CDs and DVDs for errors?

[Dale]

Andrew Udvare wrote:
> On 03/12/2018 17:50, Dale wrote:
>> Jack wrote:
>>
>> I was wondering if the checksums could be checked?  If the OP can find
>> the checksum for the DVD as it comes from the factory, then he could
>> check what he has against that.  Question is, is that info even
>> available or does it vary over batches of DVDs?  If it varies, it may
>> not be possible to test that way even if checksums are available. 
>>
>> Just throwing that out there in case checksums are available and it
>> could be done that way.  Sort of doubt it tho. 
> Checksums do exist. The Redump project is trying to collect all relevant
> disc information for every video game ever made, basically.
>
> http://redump.org/disc/57802/
>
> The process to generate this information is very specific and requires
> software that isn't made for Linux unfortunately. But the MD5, CRC32,
> SHA1 is there which can be usually be checked with `dd /dev/sr0 |
> sha1sum` for a basic disc.
>
> PS1 and PS2 games can be checked without special hardware in this case,
> but for others, specific hardware is required.
>
> In my case I have a JTAG Xbox 360, so the best way for me to check a
> game is to have my Xbox 360 dump the disc contents entirely with an app
> that would not be available on a normal Xbox 360. If this fails at any
> point it's a bad disc (or it needs cleaning/repair).
>

So as usual, they are not very Linux friendly.  Figures.  I was hoping
that there might be something helpful out there.  Sounds like there is
but only in certain cases.  That said, if that will help the OP with
only half the games, that is half that can be tested.  Otherwise, one
has to play a lot of games and see if it crashes.  ;-)

My favorite game, if you call this that, Kpatience.  I play spider
solitaire with it.  Sometimes a few other games.  I did play Tux Racer
once years ago tho.  I don't recall ever buying a game tho.  I've heard
of a lot of them and even seen some run but never was to into it. 

Maybe some of this will lead to something that can help the OP. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Software for checking CDs and DVDs for errors?

[Pouru Lasse]

Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> writes:

> Andrew Udvare wrote:
>> On 03/12/2018 17:50, Dale wrote:
>>> Jack wrote:
>>>
>>> I was wondering if the checksums could be checked?  If the OP can find
>>> the checksum for the DVD as it comes from the factory, then he could
>>> check what he has against that.  Question is, is that info even
>>> available or does it vary over batches of DVDs?  If it varies, it may
>>> not be possible to test that way even if checksums are available. 
>>>
>>> Just throwing that out there in case checksums are available and it
>>> could be done that way.  Sort of doubt it tho. 
>> Checksums do exist. The Redump project is trying to collect all relevant
>> disc information for every video game ever made, basically.
>>
>> http://redump.org/disc/57802/
>>
>> The process to generate this information is very specific and requires
>> software that isn't made for Linux unfortunately. But the MD5, CRC32,
>> SHA1 is there which can be usually be checked with `dd /dev/sr0 |
>> sha1sum` for a basic disc.
>>
>> PS1 and PS2 games can be checked without special hardware in this case,
>> but for others, specific hardware is required.
>>
>> In my case I have a JTAG Xbox 360, so the best way for me to check a
>> game is to have my Xbox 360 dump the disc contents entirely with an app
>> that would not be available on a normal Xbox 360. If this fails at any
>> point it's a bad disc (or it needs cleaning/repair).
>>
>
> So as usual, they are not very Linux friendly.  Figures.  I was hoping
> that there might be something helpful out there.  Sounds like there is
> but only in certain cases.  That said, if that will help the OP with
> only half the games, that is half that can be tested.  Otherwise, one
> has to play a lot of games and see if it crashes.  ;-)
>
> My favorite game, if you call this that, Kpatience.  I play spider
> solitaire with it.  Sometimes a few other games.  I did play Tux Racer
> once years ago tho.  I don't recall ever buying a game tho.  I've heard
> of a lot of them and even seen some run but never was to into it. 
>
> Maybe some of this will lead to something that can help the OP. 
>
> Dale
>
> :-)  :-) 

Looks like checking the checksums is the way to go for the PS2 games,
somehow I just assumed it wouldn't be that simple.

I thought that dvdisaster should work for DVDs based on the name, but it
gives the error "this software does not support DVD-ROM type media" for
DVD games and also for regular movie DVDs. Maybe the ebuild is limited
to just CDs for some reason.

- Lasse

Re: [gentoo-user] Software for checking CDs and DVDs for errors?

[Jack]

On 2018.12.04 02:51, Pouru Lasse wrote:
[snip....]
> I thought that dvdisaster should work for DVDs based on the name, but  
> it gives the error "this software does not support DVD-ROM type  
> media" for DVD games and also for regular movie DVDs. Maybe the  
> ebuild is limited to just CDs for some reason.

This is not saying it doesn't work with any DVD - just specifically  
that it doesn't work with DVD-ROM media.  As someone else pointed out,  
these old game console DVDs might well be using a media type specific  
to that console - still not usable with dvdisaster.  It (dvdisaster)  
would probably work with DVD-Data (if that's the right name for it)  
although that obviously won't help you any.

Jack

Re: [gentoo-user] Software for checking CDs and DVDs for errors?

[Joerg Schilling]

Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:

> So as usual, they are not very Linux friendly.  Figures.  I was hoping

The main problem with Linux is that the drivers at SCSI level in the kernel are 
worse than they could be, so if you like to get better results, you should 
encourage the kernel people to do their homework.

One of the biggest problem on Linux is e.g. that the SCSI drivers only return 
16 bytes of error information, but the standard says that the error information 
contains at least 18 bytes.

Jörg

-- 
 EMail:joerg@schily.net                    (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
    joerg.schilling@fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL: http://cdrecord.org/private/ http://sf.net/projects/schilytools/files/'

Re: [gentoo-user] Software for checking CDs and DVDs for errors?

[Steve Dibb]

On 12/4/18 3:31 AM, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> So as usual, they are not very Linux friendly.  Figures.  I was hoping
> 
> The main problem with Linux is that the drivers at SCSI level in the kernel are
> worse than they could be, so if you like to get better results, you should
> encourage the kernel people to do their homework.
> 
> One of the biggest problem on Linux is e.g. that the SCSI drivers only return
> 16 bytes of error information, but the standard says that the error information
> contains at least 18 bytes.

That's good to know. Are there any open source OSes that do it properly? 
I'd love to look at their code.

Re: [gentoo-user] Software for checking CDs and DVDs for errors?

[Joerg Schilling]

Steve Dibb <beandog@gentoo.org> wrote:

> On 12/4/18 3:31 AM, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> > Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
> > 
> >> So as usual, they are not very Linux friendly.  Figures.  I was hoping
> > 
> > The main problem with Linux is that the drivers at SCSI level in the kernel are
> > worse than they could be, so if you like to get better results, you should
> > encourage the kernel people to do their homework.
> > 
> > One of the biggest problem on Linux is e.g. that the SCSI drivers only return
> > 16 bytes of error information, but the standard says that the error information
> > contains at least 18 bytes.
>
> That's good to know. Are there any open source OSes that do it properly? 
> I'd love to look at their code.

Check Solaris and FreeBSD...

Jörg

-- 
 EMail:joerg@schily.net                    (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
    joerg.schilling@fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL: http://cdrecord.org/private/ http://sf.net/projects/schilytools/files/'

Re: [gentoo-user] Software for checking CDs and DVDs for errors?

[Joerg Schilling]

Andrew Udvare <audvare@gmail.com> wrote:

> PS1 and PS2 games can be checked without special hardware in this case,
> but for others, specific hardware is required.

Games on DVD are a general problem as I expect them to contain intentionally 
"unreadable sectors" that can neither be distinct from unreadable sectors 
because of damage nor re-created while burning a new medium.

The background is that there is too few information on the low level DVD format 
and in special as there are only secret vendor specific SCSI commands that 
would allow to deal with this kind of intentional damage.

AFAIK, there was a tool from a German who did later leave Germany for legal 
reasons who made a software called "clonedvd" that could do the job for some 
drives on Win-DOS.

Jörg

-- 
 EMail:joerg@schily.net                    (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
    joerg.schilling@fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL: http://cdrecord.org/private/ http://sf.net/projects/schilytools/files/'

Re: [gentoo-user] Software for checking CDs and DVDs for errors?

[Davyd McColl]

On December 3, 2018 11:32:46 PM Jack <ostroffjh@users.sourceforge.net> wrote:

> On 2018.12.03 11:27, Pouru Lasse wrote:
>> I've got a bunch of scratched disc-based games (PS2, Xbox 360) that
>> I'd
>> like to check for errors. Is there any program for Linux that does
>> this?
>> I found and tried dvdisaster, but it only works for CDs, not
>> DVDs. Everything else seems to be Windows-only.
>
> I have not installed dvdisaster, but I'd be really surprised if it
> won't check dvd's.  The ebuild description is "Tool for creating error
> correction data (ecc) for optical media (DVD, CD, BD)" so if it really
> balks at a dvd, I'd file a bug.
>
> Also - what is your criteria for finding an error?  Could you just read
> the entire disk or copy to /dev/null and just look for any read
> errors?  (I'm not sure if I'd try cp or dd or some variant on dd.)
>
> Jack

Not so much just for verification, but I'd also check out ddrescue. If the 
tool dumps your media easily, it's probably good. If it struggles, you may 
at least still have a workable image by the time it is done.

IIRC, some game discs may also throw a curve-ball here: they had 
intentional errors introduced near the end of the disc to prevent image 
dumping for copy protection. I'm sure I ran across a ps2 game or two like this.

-d

Re: [gentoo-user] Software for checking CDs and DVDs for errors?

[Andrew Udvare]

> On 2018-12-03, at 23:16, Davyd McColl <davydm@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Not so much just for verification, but I'd also check out ddrescue. If the tool dumps your media easily, it's probably good. If it struggles, you may at least still have a workable image by the time it is done.

The lasers in older game consoles are very weak and they get even worst with age. They don't tend to do well with many scratches. The disc may read in a PC with scratches, but then fail to load in the console. I have found PC drives to be far more resilient to scratches compared to consoles.

In the case of PlayStation 1, in the interest of space, they went with mode 2 XA format which makes the discs lack error correction codes. This means if the disc fails in a PC it definitely will fail in the console with no way to correct.

-- 
Andrew

Re: [gentoo-user] Software for checking CDs and DVDs for errors?

[Joerg Schilling]

Pouru Lasse <lasse.pouru@edu.turkuamk.fi> wrote:

> I've got a bunch of scratched disc-based games (PS2, Xbox 360) that I'd
> like to check for errors. Is there any program for Linux that does this?
> I found and tried dvdisaster, but it only works for CDs, not
> DVDs. Everything else seems to be Windows-only.

I am not sure what you really intend as your question does not really explain 
whether you are interested in detecting problems or whether you are interested 
in the best results you could get from trying to recover data from a defectice 
medium.

In any case, I recommend "readcd", as it implements read recovery at SCSI level 
and thus prevents you from depending on the usually bad implementation in the 
kernel level driver.

In addition, readcd implements low level error discovery. Note that this works 
for CD media and for some DVD drives with DVD media. I currently know of no way 
to detect media quality for BluRay media.

BTW: The error recovery methods in readcd(1) are from sdd(1) that has been used 
to recover from bad HD media in the mid 1980s already.

Jörg

-- 
 EMail:joerg@schily.net                    (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
    joerg.schilling@fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL: http://cdrecord.org/private/ http://sf.net/projects/schilytools/files/'

Re: [gentoo-user] Software for checking CDs and DVDs for errors?

[Steve Dibb]

On 12/3/18 9:27 AM, Pouru Lasse wrote:
> I've got a bunch of scratched disc-based games (PS2, Xbox 360) that I'd
> like to check for errors. Is there any program for Linux that does this?
> I found and tried dvdisaster, but it only works for CDs, not
> DVDs. Everything else seems to be Windows-only.
>
> - Lasse
>

For DVDs, I use ddrescue. Keep a log of it as well in case you want to 
do a second pass or just see where it's puking. Use its blocksize of 2048:

ddrescue -b 2048 /dev/sr0 dvd.iso ddrescue.log

dvdbackup comes with some error handling on reads as well where it can 
skip blocks, see its help output.

For blurays I'd try ddrescue as well. Blocksize for those is 65536. I 
think.

Based on your physical drive / the disc, it might whine or break because 
of DRM, or you can get weird read errors as well. That's why dvdbackup 
is best imo since it will auth the drive as well.

MakeMKV can do its best to backup a disc, but I don't know how well it 
does at error handling:

makemkvcon --minlength=0 -r backup --decrypt disc:0 .

I've got plenty of broken DVDs so I've managed to rescue those okay. If 
you're trying to encode stuff off of them, there are cases where the 
encoder can handle it best and read from the disc directly and skip over 
bad blocks as well.

Good luck.

Re: [gentoo-user] Software for checking CDs and DVDs for errors?

[Joerg Schilling]

Steve Dibb <beandog@gentoo.org> wrote:

> On 12/3/18 9:27 AM, Pouru Lasse wrote:
> > I've got a bunch of scratched disc-based games (PS2, Xbox 360) that I'd
> > like to check for errors. Is there any program for Linux that does this?
> > I found and tried dvdisaster, but it only works for CDs, not
> > DVDs. Everything else seems to be Windows-only.
> >
> > - Lasse
> >
>
> For DVDs, I use ddrescue. Keep a log of it as well in case you want to 
> do a second pass or just see where it's puking. Use its blocksize of 2048:
>
> ddrescue -b 2048 /dev/sr0 dvd.iso ddrescue.log

readcd is better for any optical media as it is able to directly send SCSI 
commands. Note that readcd implements the error recovery from sdd(1), that 
exists since 35 years and I also prefer for normal disks.

With software that operates at block driver level, you depend on the error 
recovery features from the OS driver.

Use the options -noerror and retries= (the latter makes sense with a retry 
count > 128 as 128 is the default) and set up a low read speed as this reduces 
media flitting.

Jörg

-- 
 EMail:joerg@schily.net                    (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
    joerg.schilling@fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL: http://cdrecord.org/private/ http://sf.net/projects/schilytools/files/'

Re: [gentoo-user] Software for checking CDs and DVDs for errors?

[Steve Dibb]

On 12/14/18 3:31 AM, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> Steve Dibb <beandog@gentoo.org> wrote:
>
>> On 12/3/18 9:27 AM, Pouru Lasse wrote:
>>> I've got a bunch of scratched disc-based games (PS2, Xbox 360) that I'd
>>> like to check for errors. Is there any program for Linux that does this?
>>> I found and tried dvdisaster, but it only works for CDs, not
>>> DVDs. Everything else seems to be Windows-only.
>>>
>>> - Lasse
>>>
>> For DVDs, I use ddrescue. Keep a log of it as well in case you want to
>> do a second pass or just see where it's puking. Use its blocksize of 2048:
>>
>> ddrescue -b 2048 /dev/sr0 dvd.iso ddrescue.log
> readcd is better for any optical media as it is able to directly send SCSI
> commands. Note that readcd implements the error recovery from sdd(1), that
> exists since 35 years and I also prefer for normal disks.
That's way cool to know. MakeMKV does the same thing - it rips stuff 
directly using SCSI commands, and you have to have SCSI generic driver 
support (/dev/sg*) enabled in the kernel for it to work.
>
> With software that operates at block driver level, you depend on the error
> recovery features from the OS driver.

OS driver, do you mean for SCSI in Linux or the driver for that ATA chipset?

Re: [gentoo-user] Software for checking CDs and DVDs for errors?

[Joerg Schilling]

Steve Dibb <beandog@gentoo.org> wrote:

> > With software that operates at block driver level, you depend on the error
> > recovery features from the OS driver.
>
> OS driver, do you mean for SCSI in Linux or the driver for that ATA chipset?

No, the high level driver that deals with attached hard disks and that also 
serves CD/DVD/BluRay drives.

Jörg

-- 
 EMail:joerg@schily.net                    (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
    joerg.schilling@fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
 URL: http://cdrecord.org/private/ http://sf.net/projects/schilytools/files/'