dbminter

I'm guessing he has an autoloader that is not being recognized. Or, rather, it detects it's "there" but is not assigning a drive letter to it in ImgBurn.

What exactly is Padding and what determines how much Padding is added? I ask because I had a DVD-9 VIDEO_TS job that was just barely over a DVD-5. Something like 4.9 GB. However, the resulting image file created was just under 8 GB. I was wondering why about 3 GB of padding was necessary for such a job. Thanks!

Have you actually tried booting this disc? Just because it doesn't have an autorun in its root directory doesn't mean it won't boot. And what exactly are you trying to make? What do you want booting from this disc?

Hm, so they do offer their Life Series on their web store. Well, you probably just wasted your time and money if you bought the Life Series ones off of the Verbatim store. If it says Life Series, regardless of where you get it, it's CMC media. The branded ones are AZO, which is good stuff, too, like the DataLife Plus series.

I don't think the Verbatim online store sells the Life Series media. I believe you will only find AZO and DataLife Plus media there. I didn't see anything labeled Life Series there. And I believe Life Series is just the media that Verbatim sells in stores. It's more likely to reach mass penetration so they sell the cheaper stuff there to maximize profit.

Yeah, I think the forum search function doesn't work for anything that is 3 characters or less. There's a minimum number of characters a search must be given before it will perform it.

One thing I've noticed about rewritable DVD media beyond 4x rated top write speed. It seems once you exceed 4x, the lifespan of a rewritable disc is considerably less. I've been using 4x Ritek DVD-RW and 8x Ritek DVD+RW for years now. The 8x discs I get about 20 writes out of before they die. I'm getting dozens out of my 4x discs. So, why is this the case? Is it a difference between how DVD-RW and DVD+RW are constructed? Or is it more down to highest rated speed? That 8x is more inherently "unstable" than 4x media. Thanks!

The write speed is determined by the write descriptors on the disc. So, if the available lower speed is not present in the write strategies, I doubt the drive will burn the disc at anything slower than its slowest write descriptor. In Write mode in ImgBurn with one of these discs inserted, check the pane of information on the right hand side. It should tell you what the slowest acceptable burning speed is. As for the Verify error, that's probably because you're using cheaper Ritek media or your drive doesn't like them. Try Verbatim DataLife Plus/AZO CD-R's and see what you get.

I wonder why there are different entries on that one disc example I posted.

There's apparently a difference between the Manufacturer ID and the Disc ID. I put in a blank Verbatim DataLife Plus DVD-R and noticed this: Pre-recorded Information: Manufacturer ID: MCC 03RG20 Physical Format Information (Last Recorded): Disc ID: 0@P-!-00 So, what's the difference between the Manufacturer ID and the Disc ID? I guess the better question is what is the Disc ID? The Manufacturer ID is obvious.

Unfortunately, CMC seemed to buy the Taiyo Yuden good brand name and proceeded to slap their crap media with its good name to trick people. Now, I've not seen any discs since TY closed up shop and CMC bought their name, so, maybe, though I doubt it, CMC is shipping decent quality media. Most likely, it's the same old CMC crap with a good name slapped on it. Check in ImgBurn for the Disc/Manufacturer ID. In Write mode, look for a DID/MID field in the right hand side pane of ImgBurn and copy and paste it. If it says CMC, it's probably typical CMC However, DID's can be faked with anything the manufacturer wants to put in there. I wouldn't put it past CMC to slap a Taiyo Yuden DID on their cheap crap CMC media. There's an old Spanish saying: "The cheap comes out expensive." Verbatim DataLife Plus costs more but it's worth it. Plus, it's only just a little over 50 cents a blank! I can remember paying $14 a blank 16 years ago for quality Panasonic DVD-R. It's up to you whether you want to use cheap media. But, cheap media tends to be unreadable, sometimes even after less than a year, after it burns. Plus, a successful burn is no guarantee a CMC disc will be readable by a particular brand of player. I had some CMC's to use as temporaries for someone to view, being only a $10 stack of 10 DVD+R. The person I made these home movies for couldn't get them to play in their DVD player because they were CMC crap. Actually, you shouldn't need the silver shiny media if you're never going to write a label on to them. The branded media will do and it's probably cheaper.

Memorex farmed out their BD-R and BD-RE to Ritek. Caused all kinds of playback problems on the Playstation 3. Verbatim BD-R and BD-RE don't.

It's unusual to find Ritek in Verbatim media. Still, it's better quality than CMC. CMC is bottom of the barrel. I've found Ritek to generally be a decent 2nd tier product. However, some people, particularly in Europe, don't get good quality Ritek. Sony farms out their DVD-R to Ritek now, that much I do know.

Well, if you bought Verbatim at a Best Buy, they will, most likely, be the cheap crap CMC media from Life Series. If you're going to get Verbatim, only get the DataLife Plus series which you'll only find online.

Wait a minute. Didn't I already reply to this a few times somewhere else?

Oh, and you wouldn't most likely have a bad download copy of ImgBurn. If it was corrupt, it wouldn't run and install. It would be highly unlikely that it downloads just enough to execute, install ImgBurn just enough so that it works, but not work right. With something like this, it's an all or nothing situation.

ImgBurn keeps logs. In ImgBurn, open Help, and select ImgBurn logs. It will open the folder containing your log file. The log file is one master log that contains all the logs. So, you'll have to look through it to find a specific operation.

The whole RW thing was an attempt to make money. The DVD-R people were making all the money off of recordable DVD so a group of other companies started DVD+RW and a new format war so they could cash in. The RW logo just means the DVD+RW consortium. They force the use of the logo because it costs manufacturers to put the logo on the media to "certify" it. It's just a cheap, money making ploy. While +R/RW media has its advantages, it just started more headaches with a new format war until Sony created the first dual format DVD burners. Then, it didn't matter what your personal preference. It only mattered, back then, that DVD-R was more compatible with older players. Now, it doesn't matter anymore. In order to be rewritable, it must say DVD+RW on it. Not just the RW logo. As your photos show, it has the RW logo on it, but it says DVD+R DL. DVD+R and DVD+R DL are write once media. Why your Windows out trying to format something it couldn't is beyond me. But, if you put that disc in ImgBurn, it will tell you if it can be written to or not. It may not be salvageable because Windows tried to format it as a giant floppy and failed. That would be what Windows would try to do if you selected Format on a DVD+R DL, I would guess. If it failed then the disc is useless, which may be why Windows now says it cannot write to that disc. ImgBurn would also tell you if that disc can be written to or not anymore.

DVD+R DL is WORM (Write Once, Read Many). Meaning, it can't be erased. It can be written to once and exactly once. The RW logo is just the logo for the DVD+RW standard/forum. There are no rewritable DL media for DVD. There were supposed to be some released years ago, but that never got to actual production stage.

I don't remember the Master/Slave settings. It's been too long since I last had to deal with them. You'll want either the LG WH NS60 (NOT the NS40!) or Pioneer's 2209/whatever the Ultra HD BD model is now. Those are the only 2 suggestions I would recommend. I'd normally used to always say the Pioneer, but they keep screwing around with the firmware making it not properly write Ritek 8x DVD+RW. They'd get it right, bork it in a new firmware, I'd tell them the problem, they'd fix it, then add a new bork in a later firmware. Endless whack-a-mole. Once I discovered the LG NS60 fixed the issues of the NS40, I've used that drive exclusively over my Pioneer 2209.

It's probably down to the age of the drive. The whole Master/Slave thing I don't think is even addressed in BIOS anymore because there are no more jumpers on drives for them. SATA seemed to do away with the need for Master/Slave settings of drives. Of course, back in the days of PATA, I set everything to Master whenever possible just to avoid headaches. I only use BD burners now, so I don't have any DVD burner recommendations. However, I'd avoid all 3 of those options. I don't think Optiarc is even made anymore. LiteOn's add random pauses into DVD DL VIDEO_TS video that aren't layer breaks. ASUS is 50/50 with me. My first BD burner with them was absolutely fantastic. The 2nd was It destroyed rewritable DVD+RW and BD-RE DL.

I've never heard of a physical RAM drive. All RAM drives I'm aware of take physical memory allocation in RAM and turn it into a virtual drive that runs much faster than your hard disk. Do you mean the drive was a DVD-R/RAM drive, like my first DVD burner was? A Panasonic DVD-R that only wrote to CD-R, DVD-R, and DVD-RAM.

It's most likely not the drive that's died. You say it works for 2/3 of your attempts, but not on 1/3. In a case like that, that most likely means that for whatever reason, the drive doesn't like those discs and won't read them. Your best bet is to try another drive by another manufacturer. You wouldn't be able to tell it's a Windows configuration issue until you knew what the problem was. Therefore, you'd know it's a Windows configuration issue. Without a specific error message, and given it works on 2/3 of the discs you've tried, it's probably not that.

Does anything show up in ImgBurn with this Samsung drive? Any CD's, audio or otherwise? Does it recognize blank discs of anything besides DVD+R like CD-R for burning when inserted? If you're dealing with Master and Slave setups, you must have a fairly old model as I don't think they even have jumpers anymore for those settings. It may just be this drive is too old.