what is the lifespan of a burner?

[moejr]

I think my old Plextor 32/8/4 days are numbered. I get a bad burn every second cd I try to make. It does this with Fireburner and CloneCD, so I don't think the problem is software related. Is there a special number of burns that a burner is only capable of doing? I think I have made roughly 300 burns with my Plextor. Is that good for a burner or should they last longer than that? Or is it maybe all it needs is a good cleaning? Are those cd cleaning kits worth the money? Any feedback would be appreciated. THX

 

[FrustratedUser]

Can't really say but the laser in a burner is a semiconductor laser and those have high MTBF.
My standalone CD player worked for 12 years!!
I would guess the mechanics craps out before the laser.

 

[ScrapSilicon]

Originally posted by: FrustratedUser
Can't really say but the laser in a burner is a semiconductor laser and those have high MTBF.
My standalone CD player worked for 12 years!!
I would guess the mechanics craps out before the laser.

I agree have a 10 disc car changer by Sony still reading(built in '89..) has issues with burned copies sometimes but reads regular CDs fine.

 

[moejr]

Do you think all it needs is a good cleaning? Never cleaned a cd-rw before. Plextor reads just fine, it is when I'm trying to burn a game or audio cd it stops in the middle of the burning process and clonecd and Fireburner both says that my " plextor has failed to write to cd medium ".

 

[ScrapSilicon]

Originally posted by: moejr
Do you think all it needs is a good cleaning? Never cleaned a cd-rw before.

is the environment dusty? Anyway does your burner have any type of Burnproof technology ( I don't think so..) try reducing your burning speed and End Tasking all unneeded/just along for the ride Programs sometimes when using older (non-Burnproofed type) burners system resources need to be higher and you should organize/copy from harddrive your data as well.

 

[ScrapSilicon]

it is when I'm trying to burn a game or audio cd it stops in the middle of the burning process and clonecd and Fireburner both says that my " plextor has failed to write to cd medium ".

some Ptogram is running in the background and you should End Task unneeded ones so as to free up resources. edit> hope you are copyng your data to harddrive then burning as 'on the fly' is not a non-Burnproof CDRW's forte.

 

[moejr]

It doesn't support burnproof. I did a disk defragmentation before burning and I still get coasters! IT is getting worst, it is at a point where it just won't do a complete burn for me anymore.

 

[Adul]

well try it in another PC first. I have a plextor with 500 or so burns and still going strong. we had one at work last 5 years and it is still in service. Mayeba good cleaning wuold bea good idea. And sometimes it is software that causes it. you can always try a clean install. I have had a couple occasians like that arise and nothing else but a good cleaning did the trick.

 

[moejr]

I forgot to mention that I always make an image of the file to my hardrive. I never burn on the fly. Like I said, I have made almost 300 cds with this plextor and never had this problem until now. I don't think the cause would be dust. I can't see dust being the cause to so many cd-r discs being wasted.

 

[moejr]

Adul, what do you mean about a clean install? Uninstall the drivers for my plextor and reboot? There is nothing wrong with my OS, I'm using Windows XP PRO.

 

[Adul]

well I meana totaly clean install. Well with XP i havent had that issue yet. Remove the nero and fireburner completely. Does you cd-r read cd just fine btw?
check the cable lately? i have had the longer end of the cable go bad and I ended up using a shorter cable with 2 connections instead of 7.

 

[Filter]

i've burnt about 2000+ cds on my 8\20 plextor and it runs like a champ still

 

[moejr]

My cables and connections are fine. I just thought of something, using different skins for your OS using windowblinds, could that make my burning software screw up?

 

[Texun]

I still have a HP 8x CDRW burner in a back up machine and it is still going strong. If I had to guess I would say that I have made 400+ CD's with it and the only trouble I had was when I pared it up with a Sony CDR. For some reason it didn't like the Sony and would not make a good burn no matter how I had it configured. Swapped IDE channels, Master\Slave and Slave\Master.... nothing helped. Swapped the Sony for a generic CDR and have never had a problem since. On their own each device worked fine, but not together in the same box.

About the CD cleaners: I thought they were a joke but tried one once on a CDR that only read a CD occasionally. It worked like a champ. It has a small brush that resembles an eyelash... nothing more to it.

My guess is that I had a spec of dust on the laser and the cleaner took care of it.

 

[moejr]

Do you recommend using a can of compressed air to clean the cd-rw? Or can that damage something inside the cd-rw?

 

[nortexoid]

have u tried talking to it?...they get down, sometimes.

also, it sounds busted...DMA enabled? (multiword)...why don't u test it out on a CDRW so u don't lose money...wise idea.

 

[Texun]

moejr

I don't know about using compressed air. I doubt that it would damage anything mechanical, but I wouldn't try it... just my opinion.

Also... don't think that a fresh install will fix it if the problem is software related. I've tried that and it didn't work. Have you tried it with the WinXP burn option and no other burner software installed? I upgraded to EZCD 5.0 with a patch because I did find that some recording software doesn't work well with XP.

 

[Goi]

I have a Yamaha 4416S SCSI burner that still works today. The model was manufactured in 99 I believe, so that's about 3 years.

 

[vss1980]

Got a Ricoh MP6200S (6x read, 2x write/rewrite - yeah damn old), which is pushing past 5 years old now. Did once go on a spree of not writing that well. Tried a normal head cleaning CD and it did the job fine. However, that still didn't stop me taking the thing to pieces and cleaning it properly, checking that the guiding arms for the laser were still greased, etc...
The drive is a sealed unit (or like most attempts to be - even with a tiny layer of foam around where the tray closes on the front of the drive), but that is no guarantee of dust not entering the drive.

A pressurised air can shouldn't hurt anything (as long as its not stupidly high pressure), but remember you are just blowing the dust around a bit and not really getting rid of it.

There are other problems that you can get though. Over time, if the drive keeps getting hot while writing (show me a CD writer that doesn't get a little bit warm doing its job and I will be quite impressed) the mechanics can go out. Technically it should be possible to recalibrate the thing, but I would have no idea how you would do that.

And as other people have said earlier, check your system configuration (ie. DMA mode, conflicts, etc.). Of course you could have a batch of very poor media, but that usually would only effect a write every so often.

 

[LordAccord]

Yeah, I had a teac 4x that my friend now has that has at least 1000 burns on it, my plextor now is pushing 400.... I dont really think its an age issue...

But one thing I thoguht of was a CD burning patch for windows XP... have you downloaded that yet? It could be an issue... also, plextor firmware. Don't know if they will help, but just something else to try.

LoRdAccord

 

[hungrygoose]

make sure ur temp folder isn't full of crap since u burn images everytime.....defragment often......try some different cd's....u could've gotten a bad spindle i guess!?lol.....i got a spindle of verbatims once and 15 in a row showed up as not being blank cd's!....

 

[moejr]

I tried burning an image with a cd-rw media at 4x speed and it worked. So I then tried using a cd-r media and burned at 8x(maximum) speed and it worked. I don't know what that is all about? I'm going to buy a cleaning kit today and try and burn a few things.

 

[corkyg]

I have had 4 burners. The first one, an old SCSI external Pinnacle Micro 2X, started getting the same symptoms you describe at about age 5. I sent it to be cleaned and that fixed the problem. A lot depends on your environment - but if there is any smoking in the immediate area, that has a very bad effect on laser lenses, and accelerates their malfunction due to the deposit of colloidal particles on them. Dust is also a problem. As for the mechnicals - all are still going strong. Sometimes you can get a bad batch of CDR blanks too, and that can cause a stream of bad burns.

 

[lung]

I would suggest getting a bit brave and taking the thing apart. My old Toshiba drive was giving me problems about a year ago. Same sort of thing, sporadic bad burns and very dodgy read capabilites. I ripped it out, and took it apart. What did I find? A big ball of dust, right on the lens! No wonder it wouldn't work right... I had tried compressed air and even a lens cleaning disk to no avail. Sometimes you just have to get your hands dirty and get right in there..

FYI: That Toshiba is still alive after that and having burned approximately 500 more discs afterwards. I gave it to a friend when I got my new Yamaha drive and he says it is still going strong.

 

[MrMaster]

My buddy's 8x creative did the same thing. He could only burn in 2 or 4x. It would usually burn okay in ME but never would burn okay with NTFS.