CloneCD makes IMG of Severely Cracked CD and reports no errors? Why?

[BuddTX]

It was a severely damaged "starburst" cracked CD that I bought at a garage sale, I am not al all worried about the CD itself, but I am concerned about why this happened.

I always thought that CloneCD, along with AnyDVD was my perfect tool to make perfect, 1:1 (error free!) CD's and DVD's.

So here is what happened:

I am trying to create MP3's using EAC and LAME. (not that it matters, but ver .99 beta 4 of EAC and 3.98 beta 7 of LAME, using --preset fast standard).

EAC, in SECURE mode reads tracks 1-6 with no errors, but just hangs on track 7 and above. NO DUH! The CD is severely damaged! It almost looks like a BB gun shot the CD. No hairline fractures here, there is some very visible damage.

So, just for fun, I decide to use CloneCD (5.3.1.0) and VirtualCloneDrive 5.3.0.1 to see if I can get any more music off of this CD. (BTY, THANKS for a GREAT and FREE VirtualCloneDrive, it is just AWESOME!) (OH, and also, I am a legal, registered user of CloneCD, AnyDVD, and CloneDVD2, just FYI).

So I choose all the correct options in CloneCD (Audio CD), and CloneCD procedes to rip the image to the HD. It reports no errors. (Using BenQ 1655 burner) Now I have seen CloneCD try to read damaged CD's before, and it will tell me "error reading sectorsXXX, inserting dummy data" (or something like that).

But no, CloneCD rips the CD with no reported errors.

COOL, I think I own some BADDD software, it correctly read a severely damaged CD!

So I mount the image, but before going back to EAC to create the MP3's, I decide to listen to the tracks that were unreadable. Perfect Music? Far from it, it was severely distorted.

No big deal, the CD was physically damaged, but why did CloneCD not report any errors?

I depend on CloneCD to make perfect, archival copies of my music CD's (not MP3's) but an image stored on my HD to make a exact archival copy of my original CD's.

Other forums, like HydrogenAudio, say that I should NOT use CloneCD for Audio CD's but only Data CD's. They say that because of the very weak data redundancy found in Audio CD's, treating Audio CD's like Data CD's can lead to loss of music.

Then again, I always thought Zeros and Ones, were zeros and ones.

So, any thoughts? (Thanks!)

 

[mike20021969]

digital data information on a cd disc might be zero's and ones.
but data under a crack on the disc surface cannot not be read (error correction can only do so much to fill in missing data).
that explains why your 'unreadable' tracks were distorted when you played them back.

the fact that clonecd was able to copy the 'damaged,cracked' cd is partly down to the software and your pc drive i would've thought.

 

[BuddTX]

digital data information on a cd disc might be zero's and ones.
but data under a crack on the disc surface cannot not be read (error correction can only do so much to fill in missing data).
that explains why your 'unreadable' tracks were distorted when you played them back..

Of course that makes sense, I expected the CD to be unplayable. There is gaping cracks in the CD, of course data is missing.

the fact that clonecd was able to copy the 'damaged,cracked' cd is partly down to the software and your pc drive i would've thought.

My question is, why would CloneCD report 100% success, with no errors, on such a severely damaged CD, when other times, (same drive, BenQ 1655, same PC), when I try to make an image of a CD that has scratches on them, but not nearly as damaged as this one cd, CloneCD will report errors on sectors that it cannot read.

So, in summary, my two questions are:

1. Why did CloneCD not report any errors?

2. Is CloneCD the best tool for backing up my Audio CD's?

 

[mike20021969]

1. Why did CloneCD not report any errors?

forgetting eac for a moment,did the original cd play in your pc drive? (say in windows media player or whatever you use,even with distorted audio).
if yes,there's no reason for clonecd to report an error.
exact audio copy probably uses a different 'method' for getting the data (perhaps it 'checks' it as it is reading it to make sure it isn't corrupted) and may not be as tolerant as clonecd.