dbminter

The 213 is available from Pioneer's site for order. And, gee, I wonder if Pioneer has ever addressed the 8x DVD+RW borked firmware across a dozen different devices? They've only had nearly a decade to work on it...

I can't answer the first part, but an ISO file will always be larger than the contents you put into it. The ISO file has overhead and various data in it that comprise the structure of the file itself.

Verbatim can be a bunch of hypocrites. They constantly comment on my Office Depot reviews of their CMC junk that I don't know what I'm talking about. I've got over 20 years experience burning optical discs. I've seen the results of CMC bad media first hand. Over half the problems on this board are caused by CMC media and they generally go away when people switch from them. If anyone is blowing smoke, I'd say it's Verbatim as Amazon.com basically copies and pastes whatever they are given in an item description.

Pioneer drives are fine for everything except 8x DVD+RW. Didn't test 4x DVD+RW, so I don't know if it's just the 8x variety, of which there is only one kind out there manufactured now, or if it affects all DVD+RW discs. Verifies will almost always fail, even on brand new, just formatted discs. Has been that way for nearly 10 years now. Otherwise, I like Pioneer drives. Pioneer used to be my go to DVD burners. I had one last me over 2 years! The best drive I ever had. Their BD were also my go to BD burners for a few years. Then, they changed the firmware and borked 8x DVD+RW and they've yet to fix it. The WH16NS40 has a fatal flaw. 9 times out of 10, it will fail to write properly to BD-R/RE DL. Will almost always fail Verify. That's why I've stuck with the NS60, even though I don't need its advanced UDH BD features. At least it properly wrote to BD-RE DL that I needed.

Yes, a few years ago, the prices of the DataLife Plus DVD+R DL unreasonably jumped to about $75 and then dropped back down to around $55 now. I use an internal half height LG WH16NS60 in a USB 3.0 enclosure on my desktop. Most slim models are junk. Even my Verbatim one has its issues because it's a Pioneer and they won't properly write to 8x DVD+RW. They haven't for almost 10 years now and Pioneer REFUSES to do anything about it, despite my constant stream of tech support e-mails telling them the firmware needs to be updated. The NS60 is the best of the worst. The NS60's problems are it only writes to 12x on 16x BD-R and they tend to die after 7 months. However, LG has a very liberal replacement policy. I am in the processing of getting like my 20th refurbished drive and they've yet to charge the $50 out of warranty replacement fee they say they will charge me.

I couldn't say my experience with Verbatim BD-R DL. Just BD-RE DL. They were made by Verbatim, but didn't seem to be of high quality. I'd write some data to them for a yearly backup and go back to them a year later to write the next year's backup to it, but the disc was no longer viable. I've been using Verbatim's made BD-R for like a decade without issue. They've been the only ones that didn't have playback issues on the PS3. Verbatim "makes" the only viable option for DVD+R DL, but they are actually farmed out to Mitsubishi, which makes some of the best discs out there. Mitsubishi also makes their DataLife Plus/AZO DVD-R, which I've used for like 15 years. As for prices, the only really high prices are like on Verbatim's DVD+R DL. More than $1 a disc, where as their DVD-R are like 50 cents each. Their BD-R is like $35 for 50 of them. At least on Amazon.com in the US, where I get mine, they are relatively affordable.

Verbatim makes very little of its own products. About their BD-R in North America are the only things it doesn't farm out to someone else. And their optical drives are farmed out to Pioneer. My Verbatim USB BD burner is actually a Pioneer. That site ImgBurn directs to for firmware updates doesn't list every manufacturer or if there are no firmware updates, the model won't be listed. The BDR-UD03 is not listed on Pioneer's site for firmware, so there probably isn't a firmware update. Plus, rebranded models, where one company releases someone else's product under their own name, generally rarely receive firmware updates. As long as lowering the write speed works, that is probably your only available workaround. The log tells me your media is Ritek, made by Ritek, and not Ritek that was farmed out to CMC Magnetics. Which is probably a good thing, believe it or not. You could try to see if you could find other media, but you're unlikely to find BD-50 discs that are any good from anyone else. North American BD-50 from Verbatim is made by Verbatim and not farmed out to Ritek. Do you live in Europe? I believe Ritek in Europe is not as higher a quality as it is in North America, although Ritek in North America is really a 2nd tier brand. However, any media beyond a single layer you would only trust to Mitsubishi for DVD or Verbatim for BD in North America.

Open ImgBurn, and, under Help, choose the open Log option. Copy and paste the portion of the log from one of these failed Ritek burns. I'm looking for something in particular that I think is the problem. In short, it's most likely the Ritek discs. Ritek have been known to be problematic, particularly Ritek discs from Europe. They may be Ritek or they may be CMC Magnetics, which may be better or worse, depending. You could try using a different model external drive, but if it doesn't like those Ritek discs either, it won't help. You could try searching for a firmware update that might provide better write compatibility with Ritek. In Write mode, right click on the burner drive letter and choose the last option in the list from the context menu, the one about checking for a firmware update.

What I use is a BD burner. LG's WH16NS60 half height internal model in a Vantec USB 3.0 enclosure. Either Gen 1 or 2; each have their own drawbacks. For instance, on the G2, you cannot update the firmware of NS60's put into them. Don't know anything about EAC rips, so I can't say if it would be a proper fit for your needs.

Interesting. I've never seen a 24x supported write speed before for DVD. But, that most likely isn't an issue as you said you tried slower speeds, I think. At this point, I'd invest in some kind of USB external burner and try the same discs and image in it. If that works, you know it's a problem with the LG drive in question.

Please post a log of a failed burn to one of these discs. Under Help, there's a Log option. It's actually fairly common for CD's to continue burning correctly where DVD's fail or vice versa. It's even more common on Blu-Ray versus CD/DVD as there are 2 lasers in those: one for BD and one for CD/DVD. Just as a cursory evaluation, I'd say your drive has probably reached the end of its lifespan for burning DVD's. My benchmark is if a particular type of media fails 3 times in a row, I then swap in a replacement drive and try again. And it usually works after doing that. Just did it myself last week, actually.

Is there a way to enable Error Correction in ImgBurn when reading Audio CD's to image files? I looked through the Settings and nothing seemed immediately obvious. I ask because I've noticed that I've had several Audio CD's that don't read correctly to image files. There are skips in tracks when playing back. But, if I enable Audio Correction in something like iTunes, the tracks are extracted without these skips in playback. Thanks!

What do you mean what option should you use? The right click context menu one? The one at the bottom for checking for firmware updates. If you mean which update package from the web page check for firmware updates opens, you'll want one for your TSST drive, which is model TS-L633F and a firmware greater than TF01.

Every program you run on a laptop can "affect" your laptop. You're more likely to "affect" the optical burner in it if you update the firmware and it fails for whatever reason. Or if your battery dies during firmware update. The check for update feature in ImgBurn does not actually execute anything other than your default web browser. It sends the Drive ID string for your burner model to a web site where it checks to see if a database has any entries for firmware for that model. You then choose to instigate to download anything you might find useful. Then, you choose to execute that firmware updater package executable.

Quote from earlier: "You could try trying a different burner. That may help. May not. You could check for a firmware update, but there most likely isn't one and probably wouldn't help here even if it did. In Write mode, right click on the TSST burner and choose the option at the bottom of the context menu list for checking for firmware update."