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CD drive won't read some CD's


oshunluvr
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I have a toshiba cd/dvd rw model SDR5372V. I am currently ripping my cd collection with kaudiocreator and my drive ( or mandriva???) won't read about 5% of my cd's. They are in various condition some brand spankin' new some scratched. Many of the readable cd's are scratched but are read no problem and all of the cd's deemed unreadable are playable on my stereo. Anyone else have this problem with or is this a hardware issue???

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You should swap to a more serious audio extractor- say K3B or grip, using "paranoia" mode. This is the only way to rip scratched CD's properly... kaudiocreator is just a kid's toy with no useful configuration at all.

You can also use the best audio extractor for windows, namely Exact Audio Copy. It works mighty fine under wine, with no special wine-related configuration- the app needs just to be set at windows2000 compatibility mode.

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You should swap to a more serious audio extractor- say K3B or grip, using "paranoia" mode. This is the only way to rip scratched CD's properly... kaudiocreator is just a kid's toy with no useful configuration at all.

You can also use the best audio extractor for windows, namely Exact Audio Copy. It works mighty fine under wine, with no special wine-related configuration- the app needs just to be set at windows2000 compatibility mode.

Except my issue isn't with kaudiocreator, some of the cd's won't read in my drive. Mount reports "no media detected". Please read the first post.

Edited by oshunluvr
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I think you should follow scarecrows advice. I have used Grip for a number of years and never been disappointed.

Unlike a lot of applications it is designed to do one thing and do it the best way possible, namely rip music.

The statement of yours about "no media detected" is usually the norm rather than the exception for audio CDs.

 

You should also follow IanW1974s suggestion. It doesn't take too long for gunk to accumulate near the read/write laser and using an airpower pack rarely has any practical value in trying to dislodge it.. You need one of those special cd cleaning discs with the cleaning liquid applied.

 

Cheers. John.

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Except my issue isn't with kaudiocreator, some of the cd's won't read in my drive. Mount reports "no media detected". Please read the first post.

 

That could really be a drive issue, but always combined with the fact that your "unreadable" audioCD's are (most likely) NOT audioCD's, after all!

Do they have the audioCD logo stamped on the box, or on the medium? If they don't, then they are the usual protected stuff (Cactus Data Shield, Key2Audio and such), and these disks are read properly only by selected hardware- many drives will fail even reading them.

Checkout here for more info:

http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?threadid=46159

Edited by scarecrow
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mount reports mount: No medium found Please check that the disk is entered correctly.

 

cdparanoia reports 004: Unable to read table of contents header

 

And yes, there was a disc in the drive. One that's been played maybe 10 times and has very little if any wear. It's clean and rather new. 95% of my collection of about 450 cd's ripped fine and there doesn't appear to be any pattern to the failures.

 

I read through the material regarding protected cd's. None of my cd's have the logo indicating protecting and a few of them are early 1990's, way before audio cd protection. Also nothing I read indicated you couldn't listen to protected cd's, therefore this isn't the issue. These cd's won't MOUNT.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the fact that the disc's won't MOUNT has nothing to do with the type of ripping software I'm using or if the disc is a data or audio or whatever, right? These are commercially purchased (not pirated) audio cd's. The few that were multimedia, ripped just fine with kaudiocreator and played just as well with amarok.The drive is three months old and hardly used (less than 30 discs prior to this project) - and I've never in 25 years needed to clean a cdrom drive, much less a new one, so I believe I am looking for a hardware or driver/setup problem. I posted this topic under hardware for those reasons.

 

I had several issues with mandriva and the install program created fstab entry in 2005LE, so here's the fstab entry:

/dev/hdd /mnt/cdrom auto umask=0,user,iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,noauto,ro,exec,users 0 0

 

Here's some errors from messages log file

Dec  8 15:38:11 localhost kernel: hdd: packet command error: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
Dec  8 15:38:11 localhost kernel: hdd: packet command error: error=0x30 { LastFailedSense=0x03 }
Dec  8 15:38:11 localhost kernel: ide: failed opcode was: unknown
Dec  8 15:38:11 localhost kernel: ATAPI device hdd:
Dec  8 15:38:11 localhost kernel:   Error: Medium error -- (Sense key=0x03)
Dec  8 15:38:11 localhost kernel:   (reserved error code) -- (asc=0x02, ascq=0x00)
Dec  8 15:38:11 localhost kernel:   The failed "<NULL>" packet command was: 
Dec  8 15:38:11 localhost kernel:   "80 86 d8 f7 ff ff ff ff 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 "
Dec  8 15:38:13 localhost kernel: hdd: packet command error: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
Dec  8 15:38:13 localhost kernel: hdd: packet command error: error=0x30 { LastFailedSense=0x03 }
Dec  8 15:38:13 localhost kernel: ide: failed opcode was: unknown
Dec  8 15:38:13 localhost kernel: ATAPI device hdd:
Dec  8 15:38:13 localhost kernel:   Error: Medium error -- (Sense key=0x03)
Dec  8 15:38:13 localhost kernel:   (reserved error code) -- (asc=0x57, ascq=0x00)
Dec  8 15:38:13 localhost kernel:   The failed "Read Subchannel" packet command was: 
Dec  8 15:38:13 localhost kernel:   "42 02 40 01 00 00 00 00 10 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 "

These errors repeat continually as long as one of the "unreadable" cd's is in the drive. My next test (immediately after this post) is to boot to windozeXP and see if the disc are readable then. If so, then it's a driver or setup issue, if not more likely a hardware issue.

Please, if you have any suggestions regarding my issue - that is some cd's not mounting while most do - point me in the right direction, thank you.

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Can you confirm, 100% of the unreadable CD's are audio CD's?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the fact that the disc's won't MOUNT has nothing to do with the type of ripping software I'm using or if the disc is a data or audio or whatever, right?

This is important because in theory you don't really mount an audio CD.... although as I remember Mandr* does some funny stuff with them to make it "appear" mounted...

This points to an incompatibility between your drive and the actual CD's... perhaps it is a driver issue but perhaps not but the drive shouldn't be mounted to rip it.

.The drive is three months old and hardly used (less than 30 discs prior to this project) - and I've never in 25 years needed to clean a cdrom drive
Whatever, I know people who never use a safety or who don't wear seat belts too. I also know of many people who shoot their balls off because they don't use a safety or need plastic sugery because they refuse to wear a seatbelt.

In a few occaisions Ive found taken the drive apart and reassembling it after a good clean works..

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All audio CD's are NOT mountable- for the very simple reason there is no filesystem in there, only RAW data tracks!

You are obviously referring to mounting to a virtual filesystem (like KDE's "audiocd" vfs), which is a very different story- but an audio CD can NOT be mounted to a real mount point- period.

Edited by scarecrow
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All audio CD's are NOT mountable- for the very simple reason there is no filesystem in there, only RAW data tracks!

You are obviously referring to mounting to a virtual filesystem (like KDE's "audiocd" vfs), which is a very different story- but an audio CD can NOT be mounted to a real mount point- period.

Ok, so obviously I'm confusing what Mandriva says vs. what the actual software is doing. It sounds like what you mean is when I put in an audio CD and right click on the drive icon and select "mount", and the icon changes to a mounted icon, it's not actually "mounted". I'm sure you can see why that would confuse me. From your explanation it appears the word "MOUNT" has more than one meaning in use here. For the casual user, it seems to me that the function is the same - a "mounted" disc can be accessed and a "mounted virtual file system" can be accessed - and to the user of a program like ripping software the function is exactly the same. Interesting, but does that apply to my issue? All semantics aside none of that changes the fact that a random selection of cd's won't "play" - and that is the issue I was trying to resolve. Does it matter what ripping software is being used if the disc is unreadable by the hardware or operating system? I don't think so, and that was my point regarding software selection.

 

Gowater:

Can you confirm, 100% of the unreadable CD's are audio CD's?

Yes, a couple are multimedia (a data track and audio tracks together on one disc). Of those few, most

of them will appear readable, but then be unable to rip some or all of the audio tracks. The data tracks are accessable no problem.

 

This is important because in theory you don't really mount an audio CD.... although as I remember Mandr* does some funny stuff with them to make it "appear" mounted...

This points to an incompatibility between your drive and the actual CD's... perhaps it is a driver issue but perhaps not but the drive shouldn't be mounted to rip it.

See the earlier paragraph - I certainly didn't know that the disc were treated differently this but it makes sense. That's why people like me need these forums - to get the info.

 

"The drive is three months old and hardly used (less than 30 discs prior to this project) - and I've never in 25 years needed to clean a cdrom drive"

Whatever, I know people who never use a safety or who don't wear seat belts too. I also know of many people who shoot their balls off because they don't use a safety or need plastic sugery because they refuse to wear a seatbelt.

In a few occaisions Ive found taken the drive apart and reassembling it after a good clean works.

Interesting analogies, but I'm not sure how they apply. Regarding the "to clean or not to clean" issue, I was simply trying to point out why I didn't believe - within my experience - that the drive being dirty was likely, given the age and use level and environment of the drive. My opinion on that hasn't changed. I've also never found a vcr cleaning tape to make any difference either. When the vcr started to act up, and I used a cleaning tape, it has never made any difference. The vcr still needed service or replacement. My personal opinion - most so called "cleaning" products aimed at electronic devices are designed to make money for the seller by capitalizing on the fears of the consumer. Kind of like the home alarm companies and insurance industry (I hope all your ball-less friends didn't get robbed while recovering from their plastic surgery - :lol2: ). The cost vs. benefit ALWAYS leans heavily toward supplier and 99% of the consumers see no real benefit. At least in a vcr the tape actually touches the head. I was under the belief that CD's used light and the only physical contact was the spindle on the disc, therefore I find it difficult to believe that anything other than airborne dust would effect the drives ability to read a disc, leading me to the conclusion that newer drives are less likely to need serious cleaning.

 

Whew... OK - Back to the thread...

Taking scarcrows advice and reading up on copy protection led me to the cdfreaks forums and I found a few comments on the drive model I am having trouble with - none good. A trip to the toshiba website found a firmware upgrade, but it claimed to be for speed not compatibilty. Of course, the upgrade is a windows executable (I swear I will never buy another product from a company that forces you to use that P.O.S. operating system). I booted to xp and updated the firmware and still - while running xp and after booting back to mandriva - no go on the discs. SO friends - here's where the thread ends. Clearly , the drive is of inferior manufacture and will be donated to the local school. BTW since I have to take the frigging' thing out anyway - just for the sake of the argument - I will disassemble, inspect, clean and try it one more time before drop kicking it. I will truthfully report my findings here and either eat crow - or serve it! Thanks to all of you for your time reading and posting on this and all my other threads.

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All audio CD's are NOT mountable- for the very simple reason there is no filesystem in there, only RAW data tracks!

You are obviously referring to mounting to a virtual filesystem (like KDE's "audiocd" vfs), which is a very different story- but an audio CD can NOT be mounted to a real mount point- period.

Ok, so obviously I'm confusing what Mandriva says vs. what the actual software is doing.

Yep I haven't done this for a while in mandriva but it (last time I checked) does some weird thing with audio CD's which basically rips the to ogg and then presents them like a filesystem and also as tracks.

 

It sounds like what you mean is when I put in an audio CD and right click on the drive icon and select "mount", and the icon changes to a mounted icon, it's not actually "mounted". I'm sure you can see why that would confuse me.

Absolutely... personally I don't like that sort of "white lie" but its a mandriva type thing meant to help n00bies .. when in reality it just confuses them (IMHO)

 

All semantics aside none of that changes the fact that a random selection of cd's won't "play" - and that is the issue I was trying to resolve. Does it matter what ripping software is being used if the disc is unreadable by the hardware or operating system? I don't think so, and that was my point regarding software selection.

YES! That is what they were saying from the begining...

There are different levels of UNREADABLE....

What mandriva does is some ripping on the fly... then it looks like it has files on the CD which it doesn't really have... but the more serious CD ripping software uses increasing levels of error correction AND more or less wants exclusive access to the CD... If the CD is "fake-mounted" (for want of a better word) it doesn't have exclusive access...

Also any automatic stuff that starts off interferes so if you have a CD payer auto start when a CD is put in it will interfere... GRIP et al have a lot of options for working with difficult and damaged disks...

 

Gowater:
Can you confirm, 100% of the unreadable CD's are audio CD's?

Yes, a couple are multimedia (a data track and audio tracks together on one disc). Of those few, most

of them will appear readable, but then be unable to rip some or all of the audio tracks. The data tracks are accessable no problem.

OK, this is a good diagnostic... we'll continue....

 

See the earlier paragraph - I certainly didn't know that the disc were treated differently this but it makes sense. That's why people like me need these forums - to get the info.
Yep but just take a bit more time, what they are telling you is correct, mandriva is in some ways hiding this info "for your own good" - personally I don't like that but ....

 

 

"The drive is three months old and hardly used (less than 30 discs prior to this project) - and I've never
in 25 years needed to clean a cdrom drive"

Whatever, I know people who never use a safety or who don't wear seat belts too. I also know of many people who shoot their balls off because they don't use a safety or need plastic sugery because they refuse to wear a seatbelt.

In a few occaisions Ive found taken the drive apart and reassembling it after a good clean works.

Interesting analogies, but I'm not sure how they apply. Regarding the "to clean or not to clean" issue, I was simply trying to point out why I didn't believe - within my experience - that the drive being dirty was likely, given the age and use level and environment of the drive. My opinion on that hasn't changed. I've also never found a vcr cleaning tape to make any difference either. When the vcr started to act up, and I used a cleaning tape, it has never made any difference. The vcr still needed service or replacement. My personal opinion - most so called "cleaning" products aimed at electronic devices are designed to make money for the seller by capitalizing on the fears of the consumer. Kind of like the home alarm companies and insurance industry (I hope all your ball-less friends didn't get robbed while recovering from their plastic surgery - :lol2: ). The cost vs. benefit ALWAYS leans heavily toward supplier and 99% of the consumers see no real benefit. At least in a vcr the tape actually touches the head. I was under the belief that CD's used light and the only physical contact was the spindle on the disc, therefore I find it difficult to believe that anything other than airborne dust would effect the drives ability to read a disc, leading me to the conclusion that newer drives are less likely to need serious cleaning.

My experience is otherwise, Im not pushing cleaning products, Ive found the most effective to be opeining the thing up and giving it a good blast with compressed air ... and remove any accumulated fluff... at the same time when you put it together making sure its all aligned .. this can often get knocked out of kilter in shipping etc.

 

Regarding tape cleaning (which I know a LOT about from backup tapes and looking after huge robotic tape arrays) the time to clean the heads is not when they stop working... quite a few tape technologies actually have the cleaning on the lead-in and lead-out of the tapes... but usually the damage is done by abrasion well before that.... so you have to clean regulary... and pre-emptively to stop the damage...

CD's are somewhat different... but you can still damage them with small particualte matter ...they spin very quickly so small bits of dust are fired around ... however head-misalignment also occurs and can occur with a single bad disk which is unbalanced and hence rotates off centre causing shaking...

 

Anyway the point is that sticking a loaded pistol in your pants might not go off the first time or even the next 100... the chance doesn't change each time... according to how many times you do it, the chance depends on exterior things... if you have used a poor CD (heavily scratched, unbalanced etc) then that can misalign the drive... and it doesn't matter if its the first time you use it or the 1000th...

 

Whew... OK - Back to the thread...

Taking scarcrows advice and reading up on copy protection led me to the cdfreaks forums and I found a few comments on the drive model I am having trouble with - none good. A trip to the toshiba website found a firmware upgrade, but it claimed to be for speed not compatibilty.

My experience of CD writers is its not worth paying for quality unless its plextor... I have an old SCSI plextor 4x still works perfectly ... 90's vintage... but many manufacturers simply use cheaper components and hack the drive BIOS to the end of restricting what you can play... and in the end the drive doesn't last any longer than a "decent" cheaper one... and the drives are manufactuered to be semi-disposable nowadays anyway... the manufactuerers seem to figure you will change it for a new technology after a few months so don't seem to really put any effort into build quality. This seems to mean that many fail earlier even than expected... but largely its the poor mounting and alignment and can be fixed.

 

 

Of course, the upgrade is a windows executable (I swear I will never buy another product from a company that forces you to use that P.O.S. operating system). I booted to xp and updated the firmware and still - while running xp and after booting back to mandriva - no go on the discs. SO friends - here's where the thread ends.

Not necassarily, as has been said try the serious ripping SW... it has all sorts of add-ons for circumventing this.. Try lower speeds etc. etc. cdparanoia etc etc. (which itself has increasing levels of agressiveness and error correction)

 

Clearly , the drive is of inferior manufacture and will be donated to the local school. BTW since I have to take the frigging' thing out anyway -

I agree, but sometimes just reassembling it can fix this, often its the shipping that misalignes them..

just for the sake of the argument - I will disassemble, inspect, clean and try it one more time before drop kicking it. I will truthfully report my findings here and either eat crow - or serve it! Thanks to all of you for your time reading and posting on this and all my other threads.

Don't expect to see anything astounding.... Ive done this for others and they have said what exactly did you do... and in truth I just reassembled it ... then its worked... nothing obvious (obviously its always worth cleaning while your inside) but jusat carefully reassembling has in more than one case fixed it.

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You will have to remove the drive from your box, then open it carefully. Once you have free access to the laser and the sled, clean the laser with alcohol (if it is a glass-lens, otherwise use special cleaning-liquid). Then remove all dust from the sled and move the sled with the laser with gentle force several times completely back and forth. That is usually all that needs to be done.

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