LIGHTNING UK!

Erm possibly something driver related although going into safe mode should get round that. Do you have various controller modes available to you in your bios? ATA / AHCI / RAID etc. Maybe one of those would work better than the others. It's probably worth doing a full sector level test/scan of your hdd too. If you have a spare/backup hdd (internal or external), try burning off that instead.

I don't make drives or discs so I have no idea what's going to be happening in the future! Your guess is as good as mine. I saw no noticeable difference in burn quality between having OPC on or off... never have done. The burnproof setting makes no difference, that feature (drive's internal technology) is always enabled for DVD+ format media and cannot be disabled. That's why even when it's turned off, you can still 'pause' a burn for hours and 'resume' without any problem. In the old days before burnproof type technology, that wouldn't be possible. It used to be a case of: an empty device buffer = a coaster. No idea about Verbatim numbers. Where they come from is printed on the label.

So your problem occurs on multiple drives with various discs? It seems to me the issue is with reading what's on the hdd then. Try burning a disc in Discovery mode (the image is generated on the fly in memory rather than being read off the hdd). Use a rewritable (or a DVD-R with 'Test Mode' enabled) so you don't waste another disc.

The whole thing of overburning DVD+R DL is hit and miss. Nobody can really give you a definitive answer because such a thing doesn't exist. You're working outside of the manufacturer's 'tried and tested' limits. Whilst I'm sure they build their drives/media to perform well within said limits, there's just no knowing how they'll perform outside of them. They'd have to do what CPU/GPU manufacturers do and test for ones that can be pushed beyond the limit without failing and sell them for a premium price. Of course no such thing/process exists for optical drives/discs. So, to answer your questions... General: 1. See above 2. Possibly. But even when you find the settings, your next spindle may not perform the same way. Again, see above - actually, 'See above' probably applies to all the answers. 3. Probably not. 4. Yes. It might be fine within normal limits though so not technically 'bad'. 5. I've no idea on model numbers. The Verbatims from Singapore seem to be the best though. 6. Possibly. 7. I've no idea, I don't keep tabs on this stuff. 8. No. AFAIK, they're all made the same way. Some just have the extra hardware for lightscribe and different firmware. Settings: 1. I've no idea. Only LiteOn know what makes their drives tick and what doing these things actually does. 2. There aren't really that many settings to change. Half the ones I've read about make no difference to anything and are totally unrelated (or just flat out have no effect). OPC and force hypertuning are the only ones even remotely worth messing with. 3. It's internal drive stuff. You were never meant to burn the way you're trying to and that's why it fails. 4. Probably. The drive controls the burning and write quality. It determines success/failure. All the software does is send the data to the drive.

Can't say that I've tried any myself - or at least not for a long, long time. Maybe one of the drive reviews over at the MyCE forums will contain that kind of info?

It looks like your drive just can't cope with doing the full 99 minutes on those discs - it's purely a drive/firmware/media combo thing.

Sorry, I missed the bit in your last post where you asked for suggestions for DVDShrink style software and an external drive. Just because DVDShrink is old doesn't mean it's useless. It'll still shrink down 'valid' DVD Video content just fine. I'm sure you can Google for alternatives just as well as I can, but things like CloneDVD (by Elaborate Bytes) and DVD Rebuilder (by jdobbs) spring to mind. Don't rule out Nero (Nero Recode?), you could just tell it to output a VIDEO_TS folder and burn that - in fact, that's often better than having the software output an ISO. Personally I wouldn't buy a proper external drive, I'd buy a normal internal one and put it in an enclosure. The external ones just never seem to match up with / be as 'current' as the internal offerings. The latest models from most manufacturers are all pretty decent I think. If you've done some reading around here (which you must have if you're moaning about us recommending Verbatim media) then you'll no doubt have seen us recommending the Optiarc drives. I'd advise you to work out a shortlist and then visit the MyCE forums to see if anyone has posted a review/quality scans from said drives. These are the 4 I have in my PC currently... I 09:23:15 -> Drive 1 - Info: ATAPI iHAS624 B GL2A (M:) (ATAPI) I 09:23:15 -> Drive 2 - Info: HL-DT-ST BD-RE BH12LS38 1.00-D2 (N:) (ATAPI) I 09:23:15 -> Drive 3 - Info: Optiarc DVD RW AD-7280S 1.01 (P:) (ATAPI) I 09:23:15 -> Drive 4 - Info: PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-217F 1.07 (O:) (ATAPI) The iHAS is my day to day drive for when I'm messing around and testing various things. The others serve their own purposes.

You're using an old version of the program. Please install the current release - then you'll be able to do/get the other bit of info I asked for.

Nope, that's still not all of it. It starts with the line 'ImgBurn Version x.x.x.x started!'. Just press Ctrl+A in the log window to select all, Ctrl+C to copy and then Ctrl+V to paste into a forum reply. Whilst you're doing that, please also right click the drive selection drop down box and click 'Family Tree'. Then press Ctrl+C when the box is on the screen and Ctrl+V that info into your reply too. Thanks

You missed the top bit of the log.

Saying stuff like that doesn't help anyone. Please don't just guess at what you think you saw, get the screen in front of you and then tell me exactly what it says. There is no phone for you to call. It doesn't matter that you aren't computer savy, you learn what you need to as you go along. Nobody starts out as a computer genius.

When on 'Calculate Optimal', the correct layer break position is read from the .DVD/.MDS file (assuming you load it and not the .ISO file). There's never been any real need to specify it manually, the option is just there for advanced users, should they ever need it.

What's your X: drive? Really slow speeds are usually down to a device running in USB v1.x mode rather than USB v2.0 or being in PIO mode rather than DMA. Use the 'Reset DMA' feature in the Tools menu, it might fix your system.

You can't save a VCD to an ISO because it contains multiple tracks. The program knows that and when it calculated the default destination file name, it'll have named it *.bin. Maybe you jumped in and tried to pick a destination before the disc had finished initialising - so at that point it didn't know the layout of the disc and just defaulted to *.iso ? So eventually you end up making a *.bin file and a *.cue file. The *.bin contains the actual data off the disc and the *.cue contain info about the layout (where tracks start and end etc). Just having the *.bin in this case is useless, which is why the program (and the guides) tell you to pick the *.cue (if one exists - which in your case it does). Both the bin and cue would have been visible in the browse dialog box. They're both supported file types. If you don't have the showing of file extensions turned on in your OS (Explorer) settings, might I recommend you change it so you do. File extensions are very important and it's annoying that Windows defaults to hiding them from you.

No, your drive should be able to burn double layer discs just fine. That's why I said you should try some normal double layer discs (i.e. a regular original/silver/pressed/purchased in a store DVD Video disc). That fact you can't burn to it doesn't matter, I just want to know if your drive will acknowledge the fact it's in the drive tray. If your drive still reports (and ImgBurn displays) 'Medium Not Present', your drive is probably faulty (broken).

If your drive won't recognise any DL media (try some original pressed DVD-ROM discs too - i.e. a DVD Video disc), it's probably faulty.

Have you put a disc in the drive? It doesn't appear to think so.

ok and so what message do you see in the status bar at the bottom of the main window when you can't click the 'Write' button? There's a firmware update available for your drive. http://www.firmwarehq.com/Optiarc/AD-7173S/files.html

Post what's written in the log windows please - as per the pink box up the top

Buy them from somewhere online that lists the info - or do a lot of research and try to work it out based on info provided by other users such as yourself. Failing that, buy branded discs where you know that brand only ever uses certain MIDs/dyes - like Verbatim / Taiyo Yuden (Victor JVC).

It would appear that way, yes.

Try again after updating the drive's firmware. http://www.firmwarehq.com/LG/GGW-H20L/files.html If it still doesn't work, you know not to use any discs using the 'CMCMAG-BA5-000' MID/dye again.

I'm sorry, I can't give you the answer you're looking for. The drive burns the disc and it's failing to do so - there's nothing I can do about it. ImgBurn tells you the error the drive returned when it failed. Maybe the quality of the discs has deteriorated over time or your most recent spindle uses a different dye/MID to your previous ones. The next logical step in troubleshooting your issue is to try with decent discs.

Well, you've now got 2 drives that won't burn the cheapo 'RITEKF1' MID/dye (the 'Maxell' brand name means nothing). So like I said, try better discs... or don't, the choice is yours.

The write speed can make a difference between a good and a bad burn. That is, utter failure or passable - the actual write quality might still be awful. Slower doesn't always equal better these days. Can you please post a log of you attempting to burn that image? Just copy + paste as much as you can from the Log window, even if the Verify bit never really gets going. As for 'is there anything I can do to prevent it'... that depends. Are you using Taiyo Yuden CDs? If not, that's something you can do - they're the best.