4 bad burns in a row...

[Wag]

All of a sudden my DVD burner burns 4 bad DVD+R DL in a row. I burned the first 3 on Nero and then burned the final disc using a different program and the disc did not verify (sector errors) after the burn.

Time to dump the drive and get a new one?

 

[13black]

Try useing a optical drive cleaning CD/DVD before you ditch it.

 

[Wag]

Clean it with what? Wouldn't the price of a cleaner cost almost half the price of a new drive anyways?

 

[Quiksilver]

Try burning a CD sames its less expensive. Also Try reading known working cd/dvd's.

Alos you try updating the firmware for it?

 

[SerpentRoyal]

1. Cache data to HDD.
2. Limit burn speed to 8x for DVD and 24x for CD.
3. Use high quality media like Taiyo Yuden or Verbatim.

 

[Wag]

1. I had no problem burning those particularly brand discs before, but all of a sudden they just all started burning bad. I burned like 45 out of 50 perfect burns of a stack.
2. I am using the latest firmware.
3. That particular DVD DL media is already 2.4x media, so it won't go any slower, and I don't want to waste anymore of them.
4.The drive has no problems reading previously successfully burnt DL media on that drive.

I will try a RW single layer burn and see what happens.

 

[Captante]

The last time I had a similar problem it was some bad Memorex DVD-R's that caused it so I suggest trying different media before anything else ... you could also try cleaning the drives lens but I've never had that help anything ... considering a new drive can be had for roughly $30 you might want to just replace it.

 

[Wag]

Yep. I changed disks to RWs and it wouldn't verify those burns either. I guess I can change the ribbon cables around as my last step.

Otherwise I guess it just went bad. Odd. I didn't do anything to cause it to go bad. It's not really an old drive. a 16x burner IDE NEC 3550A.

So, should I get an IDE or SATA drive for my next one? They are both the same price now, and my mobo has 6 open SATA ports.

 

[Captante]

Go for one of the 18x Samsung SATA models ... I've bought a bunch of them in the last few months & all of them are working great:


Samsung 18x SATA DVD-RAM @ $30




This Lite-On PATA drive is a good deal too with free shipping, however I've had better luck with the above Samsung in terms of media compatability:


Lite-On 20X PATA DVD-RAM @ $33

 

[WildHorse]

One trick that stopped bad burns for me:

I run Power Defrag / Contig on just the folder containing the file to be burned (not on the entire drive) right before burning with Nero v 6.6. Some of those files, for example when .avi files have been converted to DVD format, are in several thousand fragments.

I used to suffer lots of bad burns. Now thery're nearly always good.

The free software is linked in my post in this thread.

I can't explain why the behavior of your burner has suddenly changed, but I hope that helps you in general.

As for the mysterious sudden change, did you just change the burner driver? Or did you just reinstall Windows and forget to install some updated burner driver? Check Windows Device Manager for any issue with your burner driver, & install any available driver update.

 

[Wag]

Odd. I've found that it burnt an audio CD just fine, so I copied a file to another drive and I tried burning a DVD RW again and it got sector errors again. I guess I can only assume the drive went bad for whatever reason.

Weird that it burns CDs just fine but won't burn DVDs at all...

 

[corkyg]

Not really weird. Those are two separate lasers. Failure of the DVD laser often leaves the CD laser OK - and vice versa.

 

[Wag]

Originally posted by: corkyg
Not really weird. Those are two separate lasers. Failure of the DVD laser often leaves the CD laser OK - and vice versa.

OK, that's what I thought. That pretty much confirms it then. Thanks.

 

[Wag]

OK, so I purchased a Samsung SATA 20x drive on Newegg, supposedly one of the best drives available, and I still can't burn a DL successfully. I wonder what's going on? Single layer discs burn just fine but I'm having the exact same problems that I had before on the IDE NEC drive. I purchased a new pack of discs, so it shouldn't be that.

 

[corkyg]

After all of that - it leaves almnost one conclusion. The problem is your Nero. How about uninstalling and reinstalling? BTW - what version is it and what updates have been installed?

 

[Wag]

No, it's not Nero. Like I said before, this occurs with multiple burners, Nero, ImgBurn, etc, It just doesn't seem to matter. The discs will not verify after the burn. Total coasters on both drives, and even when I cracked open a new case of DL discs to use on the new drive it didn't help.

 

[SerpentRoyal]

Dude...buring DL is very challenging on media. Get Verbatim DL media and burn at 2.5x. Make sure you cache data to the HDD. Also confirm that your HDD and opticald drives are running in DMA mode. ImgBurn and Nero will burn DL fine but only if you have quality media!

 

[Wag]

Guys, but that's why this makes no sense. I had no problems with this media before, then all of a sudden I can't burn a good one. I am burning at 2.4x too! I burnt 46 successful burns and now all of a sudden I can't burn one good one, on either the IDE or SATA drive. This is from a SATA harddrive source so that shouldn't be the problem. I tried burning ISOs, data files, every format, and they were all bad.

I'm really stumped now.

 

[BladeVenom]

Have you tried following SerpentRoyal's advice?

 

[SerpentRoyal]

Originally posted by: Wag
Guys, but that's why this makes no sense. I had no problems with this media before, then all of a sudden I can't burn a good one. I am burning at 2.4x too! I burnt 46 successful burns and now all of a sudden I can't burn one good one, on either the IDE or SATA drive. This is from a SATA harddrive source so that shouldn't be the problem. I tried burning ISOs, data files, every format, and they were all bad.

I'm really stumped now.

Name of your DL media? Garbage media has zero QC.

 

[RadiclDreamer]

There is a chance that you got a bad batch of media. I was in a bind recently and bought some cheapie media at sams, every 2-4 dics was a dud. Changed back to my taiyo yueden and things went great

 

[robisbell]

okay. what had been done to the pc, even the slightest thing, before this started happening? we need to figure out the issue, not try doing patch jobs on it.

make and model of Burners used.
make and version of software used.
amount of free space on HDD.
Amount of Memory available.
version of OS.

be as exact as possible, it helps me to help you.

 

[Wag]

I really don't know what's going on. The media is not bad, even though people will dump on me because it's Ritek 2.4x, the fact I made 46 out of 50 sucessfull burns right from the first disc means it's not bad. I installed the other drive (Samsung SATA) and burned the last Ritek of that batch, same thing. Then I open up another brand name's disc of Ritek's 2.4x (I had no idea they were using Riteks when I bought them) and those are all burning bad too. Single layer 16x and DVD RW 4x seems to burn no problem.

To answer more specifically:

1. First tried Nec ND3550 IDE 16x, removed, now using Samsung SH-S203B SATA 20x drive.
2. Vista Home Basic x64, 4GB Ram
3. Software tried so far- Nero 8.1.1.0, CDBurnerXP, ImgBurn 2.3.2.0
4. Plenty of free HD space, I tried moving source file around to different drive to see if that was problem, no dice.

I tried burning ISOs with all three programs, and data files Nero (haven't tried with CDBurner yet, I've wasted like 10 DL discs, don't want to waste any more).

I'm tempted to do a clean install of Vista at this point if I thought that might help. I was burning fine before. I have no idea what the problem is. I don't know where the problem popped up. It might have been some Windows update that caused the problem. I just don't know.

 

[SerpentRoyal]

Ritek is JUNK. Go to CDFREAKS to get a 2nd opinion. Garbage in, garbage out.

 

[robisbell]

well, exactly how big is the HDD and how much free space?