I have been various CDR Pre-Mastering programs at my job in a local high school working as Network and Computer Administrator. My coworkers and I all have different preferences in how we want to burn CDR’s for the higher faculty members and backups that they request of their precious data. What I have learned is that Padus DiscJuggler is perfect for all the non-standard CDR’s that we have to make. For example, we have to back up hard drives over the network once in a while for the faculty members of the high school. We end up saving the resource of burning the new data onto a new CDR so we burn a new session of an existing multi session disc. At first, when we were less experienced, we thought GoldenHawk’s CDRWIN could handle copying our backup CDR’s that were burned with multisession, but we were wrong. CDRWIN is capable of burning multisession discs, but is not able to create an image of the multisession CDR that we created. Well, the faculty members told us that it would be very convenient for us to create multiple copies of existing Word and Excel documents so they can use the files locally without having to access the school’s built in network. This is not the best solution with users of this environment, but they felt most comfortable with the CDR based backup system rather than learning how to effectively use the network proficiently. For copying multisession CDR’s, Padus DiscJuggler does the job right.
The program allows the user with a knowledgeable background on CD Recording to do practically anything desired with the pre-mastering portion of the program. I was able to record Data in some unpractical ways that was not possible with Adaptec Easy CD Recorder, which was included with our CD-R drive. I assume it is designed for high end CDR creation because Padus DiscJuggler has one feature which makes it stand out in my mind as being the most scalable. Padus DiscJuggler is able to record as many CDR’s simultaneously as long as you have the CDR Hardware. While experimenting this feature, I found it to be quite useful. I connected 2 SCSI CD-R drives of different brands, and one Parallel port CDR drive. I set up my pre-mastering session, inserted 1 blank CDR for each drive, and checked off all the boxes for each of the recorders. With little surprise, the burning session worked flawlessly, which saved me a little bit of time, which incidentally saves money.
The problem I have with DiscJuggler is that it does not work with all of the CDR Burners that I have access to. We had to swap out our 4x burner with a 12x burner from a higher end machine to get the software to work initially. I heard a lot of complaints of DiscJuggler not working correctly with some CDR drives. I wasted a few CDR discs trying to figure out why it doesn’t work correctly, and I finally gave up realizing that the software does have its limitations.
DiscJuggler is capable of examining the low-level information of CDR’s and display it for the user to analyze. This is a wonderful feature, which I have learned a lot from. This feature is not for every user by any means, but for those who want or need to analyze their disc, DiscJuggler is a powerful tool that can enable them to do so. Overall, I feel that most users may just ignore this feature so it doesn’t make it that much more important.
Without a doubt, Padus DiscJuggler is one of the few programs that have saved me many resources including money, and most importantly time. If you plan to make specialized discs, or just want to copy your personal backups that have been burned with multisession tracks, I recommend DiscJuggler only if you dare to experiment with your CDR Drive. I have had problems with the software initially, but now that I have figured out exactly what I want to make out of the program, it has been for the best.




Recommended: Yes