Dvd-Drive Diagnostics?

[NexusHumanis]

Uhm....sorry for the alliteration....it just sort of ended up that way.... :-)
What I am wondering, is there any way to run diagnostics on my dvd-drive to see if it is functioning properly? I mean the hardware.
I have been trying to install II alpha 6, but halfway through copying files, the install fails, giving an error suggesting media-drive or HD faults. If there is something wrong with my dvd-drive, it could explain the problem, either through a bad burn, or faulty reading of the disk.
Anything I can do to find out?

[dibl]

Re: Dvd-Drive Diagnostics?

lshw

is a good method to see how well your hardware is recognized. You may not have it installed -- if not,

sudo apt-get install lshw

I don't know of "diagnostics" for an optical drive. You could put in a music CD or a data CD and check whether it plays or shows the data.

However, I'll speculate that the problem is not the hardware, but the burn quality of your ISO image. You should burn it at 4X speed (after verifying the md5sum of the downloaded file), and if that doesn't work, try a different brand of blank media.

[NexusHumanis]

Re: Dvd-Drive Diagnostics?

Ran the command, but being far from an expert, the output did not really tell me much. I could not see what data concerned my dvd-drive.

The image I was using was burned at 2X, as my laptop is rather old.I think 4X is actually max burn-speed.

How do i veriyfy the md5checksum? Do I use the burning-software, or is there something else I have to do?

[dibl]

Re: Dvd-Drive Diagnostics?

If you open a web site which provides the ISO downloads (a "mirror" site), such as this one:

http://ubuntu.osuosl.org/releases/

and then open the folder for the version that you want, such as 8.04.1 like this:

http://ubuntu.osuosl.org/releases/8.04.1/

you will see a file named "md5sums". Open that and it will show you a "code", a lengthy number that is a checksum on the ISO file that it relates to. The purpose is to verify, after download, that the ISO file came through 100% intact and accurate. So you run a md5sum check on your downloaded file and compare the result to the one on the web site. I use K3b for burning, and it automatically runs the md5sum for me. There are free checkers out there for Windows, but I can't remember the name of the one I used to use. Google can help with that.