Q: Can I use Samsung drives for disc quality scanning?

A: Samsung's SH-W16x series, and the new 18x and 20x drives are equipped with Mediatek chipsets, that are able to report errors back to the application. Kprobe - designed for Liteon drives - should work out of the box. If Nero CD/DVD Speed is preferred, some modifications to the registry has to be done before:

32 bit Windows (Windows 2000 or XP at least):

CD/DVD Speed:

Version 4.7.7.15 and newer:

• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Ahead\Nero Toolkit\CD Speed\CD Quality

Older Versions:

• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Ahead\Nero Toolkit\CD Speed\CD Quality

CD-DVD-Speed1.png


DiscSpeed (comes with Nero 8, but can also be installed separately):

• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Nero\Nero 8\Nero Toolkit\DiscSpeed\CD Quality

DiscSpeed1.png

Vista 64 bit:

• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\VirtualStore\MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\ahead\Nero Toolkit\CD Speed\CD Quality

There you'll find an entry named "Blocked" that contains a couple of strings like "PLEXTOR, HL-DT-ST, TSST, Samsung". This has to be edited in order to remove the references to Samsung and TSST. Just delete anything but PLEXTOR and HL-DT-ST and you are done. Do not delete the whole "Blocked" key.

If the registry modifications above do not work, then have a look at this registry key (CD/DVD Speed):

• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Ahead\Nero Toolkit\CD Speed
  or
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Ahead\Nero Toolkit\CD Speed

If there is an entry named "Disable Disc Quality Test", then set its value to "0" (zero)
For "Disc Speed" that comes with Nero 8, similar might apply (not yet verified)

• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Nero\Nero 8\Nero Toolkit\DiscSpeed

(You might also check the HKEY_CURRENT_USER tree for later versions)
Notes:

1. The "Blocked" entry is created after your first attempt to scan a disc.
2. If Nero is not installed, Nero's wnaspi32.dll has to be downloaded from Nero.com and copied into the directory CD/DVD Speed or DiscSpeed is installed.

Please see also this thread: http://club.cdfreaks.com/f105/samsun...esting-217264/

Q: Is the Samsung a reliable DVD scanner?

A: This depends on your individual drive. Some drives give good results (comparable to other well-known scanning drives), some others are questionable. So take the scans with a grain of salt unless you were able to verify them with another drive like a Liteon or Benq DVDRW.

Q: Is the Samsung a reliable CD scanner?

A: Not at all. The drive does not report back all C2 errors to the application (CD/DVD Speed or Kprobe), also the reported C1 errors are way too low to believe them. So just forget it. Or the other way: If there are C2 errors, then the disc is really bad.

Q: Does the drive support bitsetting?

A: Samsung S*-W16x, S*-S18x and later series drives support bitsetting for DVD+R, DVD+RW and DVD+R DL, at least with applications like Nero or ImgBurn.
Bitsetting capabilities of Samsung 20x drives (including Sony rebadges) can be tweaked using the Patch Utility

Note: Some OEM firmwares don't support bitsetting at all.