LIGHTNING UK!

Are you suggesting something that's already possible or have I misunderstood your point? Perhaps you're just letting other people know about it?

No chance.

Why wouldn't you just turn it off in the settings?!

www.svp.co.uk

It's a drive thing, you could learn to speak 1's and 0's and ask it if you like?

Well you actually got a non standard error there (hence why it says 'Close Track Failed! - Reason: Unknown') so there might not actually have been any problem at all. I don't know if your drive is actually on an nvidia controller or not but we do know there's a bug in their drivers whereby random nonexistent errors are reported. Should the error be a real one, your drive return error codes in the 'Write Error' family - meaning it ran into a problem writing to the disc. Whilst that's unlikely to happen with Verbatim media, anything is possible and BD is such a new format that it's going to take a while for the media / firmware to reach a nice stable level.

Check with philips and see if there are any firmware updates for the drive. This is a drive/firmware/media combo issue and is nothing to do with the software as such.

and yes, try 8x or 12x. Max speed burning on crappy media is never going to end well

Don't forget to verify, it's especially important when you're having problems.

Burn at 12x and fix DMA is recommended by LOCOENG. You can read the FAQ to tell you how to do that.

Well at the moment something is blocking the proper error codes that come from the drive. You either have to update the controller drivers or roll back to olders one because the one on there now isn't working properly.

It is if you're having problems!

I'm afraid it's just an odd thing that happens with some usb drives and usb controllers. It's been going on for years and nobody ever really got to the bottom of it. Search google and you'll see what I mean.

Well they *should* be good but we've seen some really bad batches from India. Don't forget to try burning at other speeds. Your drive supports them at 2.4x, 4x, 6x and 8x. So if 2.4x isn't working (which your log shows it isn't), try 4x, 6x or 8x. If none of them work then it's a case of do you blame the Indian spindle of discs or do you just say the drive's faulty when it comes to burning DL media?

The Sony branded drives aren't actually Sony drives. That particular model is really an Optiarc AD-7200A, which in its own right is a perfectly decent drive. I personally just prefer not to buy the rebranded models because it's harder to get firmware updates - i.e. I would buy a real Optiarc AD-7200A over a Sony branded version of it. But hey, if that's all you can find (easily?) and the price is right... go for it. Oh and yes the Pioneer drives a good burners too. The difference between the 116 and 216 is that the 116 is PATA and the 216 is SATA. If that number then has a 'D' stuck on the end of it (i.e. 116D / 216D) it means it's the cheapo cutdown version and doesn't support DVD-RAM (at least not in the standard firmware).

Oh well, it was worth a shot.

Ok, time to give up and buy some Verbatims.

Get your chipset drivers from nvidia.

Please read the pink bit at the top of the forum... you missed something very important.

It's the most simple thing in the whole world. 2 cables to unplug and 4 screws to remove, then the old drive comes out. Slot in new drive, put 4 screws back in and plug in the 2 cables again... job done. If you really can't do that yourself, take it to a shop / friend that's confident about doing it.

I'm not seeing the 1.09 updated firmware there. Did you install it? Don't waste another DL until you see it say 'PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-216D 1.09' in the disc information box on the right of the main window.

Ok at least you're getting the proper error codes from the drive now. As you can see, the drive reported a 'Write Error' when trying to burn to the media you're using. There's a 1.09 firmware update available for the 216D, you should give that a go. http://wwwbsc.pioneer.co.jp/product-e/ibs/....html#firmware1 If it still fails once you've updated that, you'll have to read this: http://forum.imgburn.com/index.php?showtopic=8000

It's all about model numbers with drives... and you didn't mention a model number. That said, if it's 8x then it's already very old. Do you really need an external one? Internal drives are much more reliable (in a desktop pc anyway, laptop internal drives are normally rubbish). If you must go external, try something like this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/LG-GE20LU10-Extern...8894&sr=8-4

Don't bother with the screenshots, just copy + paste the text from the log. You can even copy + paste from the error boxes by press CTRL+C to copy to the clipboard and then 'paste' it however you want (i.e. CTRL+V). If the controller the drive is on now is a jmicron one, get the latest drivers from here: ftp://driver.jmicron.com.tw/jmb36x/Win2k_xp_Vista/

Make sure you verify your burns - just tick the little box again. The option is on by default for good reason Once you've burnt + verified a disc, post a new log.