colinhunt

Alcohol was ancient, I uninstalled it now. Daemon Tools is the latest one, and it uses SPTD 1.56. I uninstalled it as well, just in case. Let's see if this had any effect. First test after rebooting, with Auto calculate enabled: profile remains BD-RE after dragging some data into source box. Looks like we solved it! I'll do some further testing, but it sure looks like it was either Alcohol or DT, or both, that caused the odd behaviour.

Did a bunch of tray cycles. 'Prefer' box unticked- 10/10 cycles profile comes to BD-RE 'Prefer' box ticked- 10/10 cycles BD-RE Then I tested what happens when profile is BD-RE and I drag some data into Source box, with Auto calculate enabled. 10/10 x BD-RE is replaced by BD-ROM. Profile stays as BD-RE if I disable Auto calculate.

Alcohol 120%, Daemon Tools, AnyDVD HD - any of these a possible culprit? I keep AnyDVD HD disabled when burning, though. During the previous BD-RE/BD-ROM profile swapping I didn't have AnyDVD HD loaded in memory at all. Alcohol and DT are also disabled, i.e. there's no tray icon for them, and neither is there a context menu for either one.

Still under warranty, luckily How is that even possible? Drive reported BD-RE, I dragged data to source box, and profile is changed to BD-ROM. If there's no refresh from ImgBurn, how would you explain this? (I'm not claiming ImgBurn does a refresh, I'm asking for a theory ) Most of my PCs are from stone age, but I do have one other PC I could try the drive in. Will take some time to test, though. The drive resides currently in my video editing PC which has loads of various burning apps installed. It could certainly be a driver issue, but I don't know how to even start investigating that. I'll test this once the current burn is done.

This is starting to get very mysterious indeed. I ran ImgBurn with the 50GB disc in LG drive, 'Prefer' box NOT ticked, and... Current profile: BD-ROM. Write button disabled. Ticked the 'prefer' box. Ejected tray, inserted tray... Current profile: BD-RE. Write button enabled. Dragged 40GB of Blu-ray data into Build window. Boom! Current profile: BD-ROM. Write button disabled. Deleted data from Build window. Unticked the 'prefer' box. Ejected tray, inserted tray... Current profile: BD-RE. Write button enabled. Dragged 36GB of Blu-ray data into Build window. Whoosh! Current profile: BD-ROM. Write button disabled. Ejected tray, inserted tray: Current profile: BD-RE. Write button enabled. Clicked Write button. Pop-up: "Data will be overwritten. Continue yes/no?" Clicked yes and writing commenced. Drive reports profile as BD-RE, but when you drag data into Build window and check again, profile's been switched to BD-ROM. What on earth is going on here?

It worked. The 50GB Panasonic BD-RE I feared would be fit only for garbage burned fine. The data on the disc is OK, too, since the movie is right now playing on the PC next to me. It's the same disc which Nero 8 couldn't quick or full format; the disc which ImgBurn was unable to format or write on while the "Prefer properly formatted" box was ticked. I unticked the box, write button was enabled and the disc burned fine. This has to have something to do with quick formatting brand new discs with Nero 8 before using them with ImgBurn. What do you think?

We shall see... in 15 minutes

Whoa, hey, stop the press! I took out another Maxell BD-RE 25GB. This one was burned with Nero 8. Started ImgBurn, ticked the "Prefer properly formatted +RW" box, closed ImgBurn and started it again. Dropped some ~20GB of Blu-ray data into Build window. Inserted disc into LG. Write button is greyed out, status reads "Disc Not Empty". What the...? And then I noticed that 'Current profile' reads "BD-ROM". It's possible that previous Maxell had also been reported as BD-ROM. I just realized that scrolling down the Device window, there's a Physical format information section which lists BD-RE. It's quite likely I took note of that and totally neglegted the 'Current profile'. So! I unticked "Prefer properly formatted +RW", ejected disc, reinserted it and boing! Write button is no longer greyed out and Current profile says BD-RE. This got me thinking (about time, too). I ejected the Maxell, inserted the 50GB Panny BD-RE.... and ImgBurn lists the Current profile for it as BD-RE -- and Write button is not greyed out. Clicked the Write button... and LG started writing on the disc. It's done 23% so far, at a steady Write rate of 2.0x. Lessons learned so far: 1) I'm an idiot. 2) Sometimes it pays to play with tickboxes. 3) If possible, don't use Nero 8 for anything.

I'm not trying to pick a fight or say you're wrong; I'm simply reporting what I saw & experienced, that's all. Here's a start of a hypothesis: I've used Nero 8 to Quick format all my brand new BD-REs before Quick formatting them with ImgBurn. There was a good reason for this, but I've forgotten what it was. It had something to do with being somehow unable to use (or quick format, perhaps) new discs with ImgBurn, unless they were first formatted by Nero. Might that have something to do with any of this?

Ehh, sorry, what? First the write/build button was greyed out, then I unticked the box, and the button was no longer greyed out. Looks to me like unticking sure did something This was a different disc altogether; a Maxell 25GB BD-RE and drive reported it as BD-RE. But while we're on this subject, any idea why the drive would report a BD-RE as a BD-ROM? Please note that this only happened after I used ImgBurn's Quick format on the disc. Is it possible to somehow 'override' the drive and force... hmmh, probably not.

By the by, I just noticed this seems to be incorrect. I placed a previously burned (with ImgBurn 2.4.0.0) Maxell BD-RE 25GB in the LG drive, and the Write/Build button is greyed out. Below that, the status line reads "Disc Not Empty". Certainly looks like the disc needs to be emptied/formatted first. edit: Unticked "Prefer properly formatted +RW" box and now ImgBurn allows burning without formatting first.

Indeed. Ridiculous, isn't it? I haven't found the time to try another full format on my Panny media yet. Care to hazard a guess what settings (FastWrite, Format without Spare Areas) I should use?

Great, thanks. Looking forward to your discoveries.

In all seriousness... the 40 euros I paid for that disc is heck a lot of money to me, especially at the moment. You guys might be loaded, but I'm not

OK, but what should I do when I'm done painting the house and format's still not finished?