Q. What is the difference between CD/DVD Inspector and CD/DVD Diagnostic?

A. CD/DVD Inspector has more capabilities in these areas:

 

CD/DVD Inspector is more suited for the forensic examination of discs.  CD/DVD Diagnostic is for recovering data - CD/DVD Inspector does not do any better job of data recovery.

Q. How can I get a binary image of a disc?

A. There are several ways of doing this, depending on your specific requirements.  CD/DVD Inspector can create an InfinaDyne format image file of any disc, including things like Karaoke CDs, VCDs, and even DVD movies.  An ISO image can be created for some discs - the restrictions are that it must be a single-session, single-track data disc.  For importing information into EnCase or FTK we strongly recommend the ZIP image format - it will get all of the files that CD/DVD Inspector finds which neither EnCase or FTK will do by itself).

 

CD/DVD Inspector version 4 will now read (but not write) E01-type image files.  It does not write them because these image files do not contain complete content of a disc in any respect - there are significant gaps in what is collected.

Q. Why should I be using a writer?  Isn't it safer to use a reader-type device?

A. Reader-type devices do not return as much information about the disc as writer-type devices.  Also, discs with unclosed sessions are seen without the unclosed session information by reader-type devices, so you can miss all of the information in an open session.  There is no warning about this because the unclosed session is invisible to a reader device.

Q. How long does it take to process a disc to get at the files?

A. It depends.  With anything except a UDF packet-written disc, like those written by DirectCD, PacketCD and other programs it is less than a minute usually.  Packet-written discs can take much longer, sometimes as long as a day, depending on the drive and the disc.  The problem is not the speed of the drive, but is instead that the drive slows down to try to read sectors that are not readable - this is normal on such CD-R discs.

Q. Does CD/DVD Inspector support my device?

A. There are no device-specific features used by CD/DVD Inspector and it does not come with a list of drives that it works with.  All devices are supported.

Q. What is the Readability Test for?

A. This is generally not needed for forensic purposes.  The Readability Test does a sampled read from the disc with the error recovery setting for your device turned down as low as possible.  The idea is to find semi-readable spots that would otherwise be recovered by the device automatically.  Why is this important?  Instead of testing what your drive can read, it is testing how well any drive can read what is there.  This isn’t a scientific test against measurable standards, but it works on consumer hardware.  To get a “scientific test” you need special hardware and a dedicated tester - this can cost as much as $30,000.

The displayed graphic for CD/DVD Inspector and the ability to print this information out can be extremely helpful for QA purposes.  See a sample of this graphic here.

Q. Does CD/DVD Inspector support multi-session discs?

A: Yes.  CD/DVD Inspector collects information from all of the file systems and sessions present on a disc.  This ensures that you are not going to miss anything.

Q. Can this program access Quick-Erased rewritable discs?

A. Quick-erased discs are prevented from being accessed by consumer hardware devices.  In order to access the contents of a disc a special procedure must be followed with a modified drive.  InfinaDyne has information about accessing such discs available to qualified law enforcement personnel.  InfinaDyne will not disclose this information to consumers but will instead recover your disc at our facility.

Q. What files/VXD's/DLL's/etc. are installed by CD/DVD Inspector?

A. CD/DVD Inspector does not install anything outside of the InfinaDyne folder.  Also, no registry changes are made outside of those for the program itself.

The usual reason for this question is bad experiences with conflicts with other software and mystery crashes after installing it.  We are well aware of this kind of problem and our solution is no conflicts.  We do not do anything to Windows that will affect your computer in any way.  Uninstalling our software removes all trace of it.