Varying drive speed

[csiron]

On a drive with c2 enabled and the recommended settings in place for Secure Ripping, is there anything to be gained by varying the drive speed on the Ultra Secure passes?

What really matters to me is the error detection, more than the error recovery.

I'd much rather rerip at a slower speed only those tracks that have errrors rather than read all non-Accurate Rip discs at least a second time at a much slower speed.

My Plextor drive goes down to 4x on the first Ultra Secure pass if I opt for varying the drive speed.

It would be much, much better if I could rip away quickly and then go back and make the drive really work on the problem tracks, but I don't want to give up on finding errors.

[LtData]

Re: Varying drive speed

Normally, if a CD has a lot of errors, ripping it at a slow speed is recommended to try to be more precise in the reading.

Also, it looks like if you right-click on the track listing, you can re-rip tracks that are marked a certain way, such as insecure, inaccurate, etc.

[csiron]

Re: Varying drive speed

Thanks, I guess what I'm trying to determine is if varying the speed increases the chances that an error might be overcome, does it logically follow that NOT varying the speed inraese the chance that an error might be missed?

[LtData]

Re: Varying drive speed

It could, but I was referring to the fact that there is more likely to be an error at high speed than at a lower speed. In other words, what would be a major error at 40x could just be a small error at 4x.

[Spoon]

Re: Varying drive speed

It is very drive specific, we had drives which would not detect errors well unless passes were done at different speeds. Other drives which detected errors which were not there at slower speeds.

[csiron]

Re: Varying drive speed

Thank you. I guess the safest course of action is to vary the drive speeds. I don't mind it thinking there are errors there that turn out to be imaginary because I can hunt those down and "kill" them by switching among my three drives and checking CRCs, etc.

What I hate worrying about is the undiscovered error. Certainly the varying drive speeds throw a little variability into the testing. I just didn't want to do it if there was a likelihood that I was wasting my time.

Obviously none of this is a big deal for the occasional rip, but I'm embarking on ripping a little more than 5,000 discs now that I have a program I feel I can really trust.

I guess I'll just have to settle in and be patient with the slower Ultra Secure passes.

It bugs me that I don't really have a way to know that I'm using the best of my three drives -- it's only a guess that my Plextor 760A drive is the best, despite the fact that it's consistently my slowest drive. It's not really reassuring to me that the 760A has come in for a fair amount of criticism.

[csiron]

Re: Varying drive speed

I wanted to revisit this topic to test a theory on the experts.

I notice that as I rip discs (on my Plextor drive) that even without the vary drive speed option checked, the speed is virtually always -- if not always -- different as it does the Ultrapass, compared with Pass 1.

The reasons for this are that besides the fact that the disc is consistently picking up speed as it moves through the disc, there are many speed-ups and slowdowns as the system pauses for encoding and such.

If the goal is to get the disc to wobble a bit differently to see whether the drive reacts differently during the repeat passes, does it stand to reason that there's a high chance of adequate variability in the randomness of the drive accelerating and decelerating.

Again, the reason for this question, is that my Plextor takes an average of 20 minutes to rip a CD because it always drops to 4x for that first Ultrapass. Obviously the prospect of ripping my roughly 5,000 discs at that rate is an incredibly daunting prospect.

[Spoon]

Re: Varying drive speed

Plextor drives vary their own speed internally depending on if errors are encountered, for modern plextors I would rip always at full speed.

[csiron]

Re: Varying drive speed

This is the best news I've heard in a month! :smile2: Thank you!