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.
