Nero CD-DVD Speed

Nero CD-DVD Speed is a program used to test optical drives and optical media.

Nero CD-DVD Speed, which also goes by the name Nero DiscSpeed, is a suite of tools for testing optical drives and optical media. It supports both CDs and DVDs, and new versions have added BD support. The program works with burners as well as conventional drives, and it works with all types of optical media, including retail discs, write-once discs, rewritable discs and so on.

Optical drives often diminish in perform over time rather than just going kaput without notice. So a testing program is useful to gauge that performance. It’s particularly useful if you test the drive when you first get it so that you have a point of comparison, but you can also compare it against benchmarks of other people who have the same make and model drive.

In order to test a drive, the program first creates a test disc, and what this does is eliminate any variables that could be introduced by errors on a retail or written disc. Although not common, it is possible that test disc creation fails, which indicates a serious problem with an optical drive. Once the disk is created, the program can use it to measure read transfers, measure write transfers if applicable and to test that all functions supported by the drive are working within acceptable parameters.

Once the program gives a drive the all clear, you can then use it to test discs. Be mindful that if you use a drive for media testing before verifying it, then any results you receive are unreliable. The program has a number of disc-oriented tests, including Jitter, BLER, PI/PO and C1/C2. It can test erase and format, and it can also test overburning, which should give an idea of the suitability for overburning of both the drive and the media. Any tests that you create or settings you change can be persisted, including to profiles that can be loaded and discarded, and all graphs and other information can be exported to CSV.

A program like this may seem difficult to use, but Nero CD-DVD Speed really isn’t. The user interface, while perhaps a bit outdated, is well-organized, and all of the main tools and tests are rather self-explanatory. The problem arises with the data presented after testing. The application does have built-in help, but it doesn’t go as far as explaining all of the results, so novice users may be left knowing that there’s a problem but not really knowing what to do about or what it all means.

Pros

• Supports CD, DVD and BD
• Includes disc quality tests

Cons

• Somewhat dense for casual users