Help w/ Plextor 8x20 scsi problems

[Purgatory-Z]

I don't get it. I have win2k, 92% resources free, no programs running, and I fail about 1 out of every 2 CDs. This drive used to work fine, now I'm lucky if it succeeds. I'd like to fix this if at all possible, I have some technical skills and could probably take it apart and put it together if necessary.

My system:

900 thunderbird OCed to 948
133 mhz CAS2 AMD approved ram (128 MB)
10x/40x IDE DVD
2 13.6 gig maxtor 7200 rpms hds (ide)
8/20 plextor(not imation) scsi burner
klipsch promedia
sound blaster live
geforce2 MX 32mb
nic
56k modem
Win2k professional, clean install
adaptec aic-7850 pci scsi




I use adaptec ez cd creator, but I'll try other progs too.

Could it be the scsi card? The above info is what win2k gives me but I didn't think that was the specific card I ordered. Any help?


Thanks in advance,
Aaron

 

[Vinny N]

Could you be more specific, are you getting buffer underruns, or are the CDs finishing, but simply don't work?

Has the drive shown problems reading cds as well? Are you a smoker? (might be a dirty lens and need cleaning)

Do you have any other SCSI devices to test out the SCSI controler?

You might have a certain card, but what Windows 2000 reports is the chipset family for the controller probably.

 

[Purgatory-Z]

Not a smoker, there shouldn't be anything in the lens. At present I have no other scsi devices to chain it on. I found that my scsi card is only fast scsi (10 mb/sec), still should be more than enough to accomodate a 1.2 mb/sec write? How would I go about cleaning it, and where would I buy the materials needed to do it?

Buffer underrun is the main problem.


Aaron

 

[Vinny N]

If it's buffer underruns that are your main problem, I doubt it's a dirty lens.

What kind of CDs are writing? Are you using certified 8x CD-R media?
Are you writing from CD to CD, or from hard drive to CD?

Have you tried a lower speed? If so, does it fail just as often?

Yes, 10mbyte/s from card is fast enough.

The plextor drive itself only has 2mb of buffer for burning though...it might be just on the edge of having a hard time keeping the buffer full for 1.2mb/sec burning...

 

[Purgatory-Z]

on clonecd the buffer stays at 100% and it just screws up. The adaptec error message doesn't say buffer underrun(it says trackwriter error, and when I click help it says it may be from a buffer underrun). I'm using 12x certified media. I'll try burning at a slower speed, but if I have to resort to that whats the point of having the 8x burner? I went scsi to avoid most of these problems, I should just spring for the 12x ide TDK for $150 if I can't fix this. Thanks for your advice thus far, got any more?

Aaron

 

[Vinny N]

Is this the first time you started to have problems burning? Is the plextor drive fairly new?

It's possible you got a bad batch of CD-R media.

 

[Purgatory-Z]

I bought the drive brand new almost a year ago. I've been having problems for about 2 months now. 3 or 4 times in the past year I've driven home from college I've taken the computer with me. Possibly the laser got misaligned in the travel? (2.5 hour trip each way). I've tried various types of media.

Aaron

 

[Vinny N]

Almost a year ago, maybe you could just get it replaced under warranty

 

[Purgatory-Z]

I tried 3 more CDs last night, all failed. This morning I tried 1 cd at 4x and no trackwriter errors at all. What would cause me to be able to burn at 4x but not at 8x? Surely if the lens wasn't clean it wouldn't work at all right?

Aaron

 

[Vinny N]

Yeah, shouldn't work at all if the lens was dirty and you'd have other problems such as the burn not being dark or deep enough to be read by other cd-rom drives.

It sounds like a buffer underrun issue, but could have changed in your system after 10 months(you bought it a year ago, and only had these probs about 2 months ago) that would make it harder to keep your drive's buffer full.

Have you installed lots of cd-r mastering software? Perhaps too many and they all tried to install their own version of ASPI?

Has anything else changed in your Windows 2000 installation? Anything in particular that you can date to the time the problems started?

 

[Purgatory-Z]

When I think about it, the problems started over the summer after I untinstalled win98 and put on win2k. Prior to the win98 install, I had win2k on for a short period, so it has worked succesfully on both OSes. Only thing I can think of is that the laser got misaligned in the transfer back to my house? Also i tried another 8x burn and it worked, hmm this is very weird.

Aaron

 

[Purgatory-Z]

Fixed my dumb problem. I was under the impression this was a problem w/ all my software. I tried 10 test copies w/ nero, 5 w/ clonecd, and 4 w/ discdupe. No problems, it just must be the darn software or something.