If you are looking for great, useful software that is free as well, consider the services of VSO Inspector. This free add on reports various information relating to the configuration of your hardware. With this freeware the CD and DVD readers and writers that are connected to your computer can be checked.

In addition also check the firmware that is used. Also have other useful information at your fingertips like the speed supported by a given writer and the media used. In addition burnt media can be scanned to get an idea of read errors. This way you can be confident about fresh backup readability.

Lets go through the features of CD/DVD writers that can be detected and listed. Supported formats as well as region details can be detected and listed with this software. In addition get the lowdown on firmware versions and buffer size. Region code as well as read modes and write modes and the information pertaining to these are at your fingertips.

Information about inserted media can be detected and listed as well. This includes media type and capacity. In addition number of layers, supported speeds with current writer and media ID can also be detected and listed. You can analyze the media by sector reading, defining the area to check, defining the read direction etc. All this information can be very useful and best of all, it is all free.