It all began when I got my first CD recorder somewhere in 1998. At that time I installed the first burning software that came under my hands and started burning. It turned out that not every CD was successfully burned. Even worse almost every second was having problems. So I searched the internet for some utility that could check the CD and tell me if everything is readable. I could not find any at that time and that was a big surprise to me.

Since I am a programmer I stopped searching the net and created one in a couple of hours. Nothing fancy. A memo for reporting errors, check and stop button and selection of drive. That was it. The checking was done on the same basic principle as today by reading all the files. The problems I had with burning were solved a week or so later when I discovered that I had some bad drivers and replaced them. Few days later I decided to give it on the internet for people with similar problems.

After posting CDCheck on the internet it turned out that many people were interested. That lead me to implementation of some new features that would make CDCheck better. They were rescue, directory test, statistics, some options and most important better reporting and stability. The version was designated 1.8 and was released to public in June 1999.

At that time it became some sort of test project and hobby of mine. I wanted to find out how popular the program can become and if it would be possible to earn some money with it but still keep it freeware. I had some spare time so in a couple of months I added few new features like compare and filtering that were requested by some users of CDCheck. That way version 2.0 was released already in October 1999. From then on only some bugs were fixed and some minor changes done. All work was put into the next version.

From the response I got from CDCheck users the main feature still not solved was audio checking. I read a lot of papers and found out that it can be done by sending commands directly to cdrom. It did not sound too hard but it turned out much harder than I imagined. I am also having difficulties finding enough time for development so the work is progressing very slowly and is still not finished. CDCheck had to be rewritten from scratch because design was not suitable anymore. This probably introduced many bugs but it was inevitable.

Due to the large amount of work invested into the program the program is no longer free for commercial use. The test I performed with having some (good verified by hand) sponsored links on my web site did not came out too good. So I see no alternative as to make it commercial.

That is it. I hope you enjoy using CDCheck and wish to thank everyone who has helped me with the development (recommended features, reported bugs...). I hope to get all the features I have plans for in the near future. For now the work done must suffice.

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Copyright (C) 2002, Mitja Perko (CDCheck homepage)