dbminter

If it's a DVD Video disc, use DVDShrink to shrink it by 1% and it should probably fit.

Yeah, it was some kind of drag and drop area icon, I think. That sounds like what you say. I just tried it. It was the Drop Zone. Thanks!

I was in Build mode and I accidentally pressed a keyboard combination I didn't intend to. I don't know what it was, but what it brought up was a large ImgBurn icon between the Build interface window and the log window. I was able to get rid of this icon by right clicking on it and selecting Close. I was just wondering what this icon was, how I brought it up, and what it does? Thanks!

Yeah, I always thought SATA was faster than USB 3. I, too, don't know about 3.1, though.

I think you still did.

Semaphore timeout errors are, unfortunately, a bane with external burners. It's caused by a conflict between the USB bridge in the drive and your PC's motherboard. The only generally known accepted fix is to replace either the bridge in the drive, the motherboard, or replace the external drive with another one. There are some steps that some people have employed that have worked in the past, but I don't know what they are. Someone else will have to pass that information along. Over a decade ago, I had a USB DVD burner that suffered from the dreaded semaphore timeout issue. I never could fix it and just had to replace it. Although for a long time, I kept the drive for testing purposes as a beta tester. I eventually got rid of it, forgetting I wanted to keep it for testing purposes.

I know it's possible, but I didn't know if ImgBurn could do it. I never tried. Over a decade ago, I used to put CD cover art JPG's on CD-R's I'd make from Audio CD's in my collection. I stopped doing it once I noticed some DVD players that play CD's wouldn't play the audio tracks. They'd apparently default to the photo content on the disc instead of the audio tracks.

That seemed to work! dvrtool -f <Drive Letter>: 132 flashed one of my drives back to 1.33 according to the startup text from ImgBurn. Thanks for the help!

Oh, you replied while I was replying. I saw a 1 update added while typing and you seem to have found the same information I did.

I extracted Updater.exe's contents. The only thing that might be the firmware is in a folder called BINARY. It's a file called 132, no extension, but it's about 1.8 MB.

Yeah, I loaded the .EXE in RAR because it was self extracting archive, but it only contained another .EXE and instructions on running it silently. I'd guess that Updater.exe's largest internal file would be the firmware file.

Won't I need the actual 1.33 firmware file itself? The only thing I have is an .EXE updater for the drive.

The 1.33 firmware was fine for my needs, so you can probably update to that without problem. But, I can understand if you're wary of updating something that works since you can't downgrade Pioneer firmware as far as I know. My external Asus is the BW-12D1S-U, yes. I can recommend that but I CANNOT recommend the ASUS BW-16D1HT SATA burner! Here's my negative review I posted on Amazon.com: "I cannot recommend this drive. After putting it through several tests, it has failed on a variety of media. This appears to destroy rewritable media! I threw about half a dozen Ritek 8x DVD+RW at it. After a few writes, this drive would eventually write to the disc and render it empty. However, on inserting the disc into any drive afterwards, the drive lights flash infinitely. Windows will not recognize a disc has been inserted but File Explorer will list the disc as empty. I tried the same on a Verbatim BD-RE DL. It did the same thing. So, this drive destroys rewritable media. NOT a good selling point. I inserted 2 Verbatim BD-RE DL that had been formatted by Windows as giant floppies. I copied over files to them and on random files, Windows would return the "error" Cannot read from source file or disc. Immediately selecting Retry resumes the copy. It did this once on the first disc and twice on the 2nd. However, the real killer is the files actually written to the media are not written correctly! I copied over many parts in a chain of a file backup from Macrium Reflect to these discs. Reflect would load the last file in the chain to get the list of files from the archive. However, on Verify, the first file would fail to read from the first disc! It would cause Reflect to Not Respond and eventually return the "error" Verification failure Read error - permission denied. So, this means the drive wasn't even correctly writing to the BD-RE DL media. Even after I replaced the destroyed disc with a new one. Again, another NOT good selling point. I had such high hopes for ASUS drives. After Pioneer borked their drives with the latest firmware, I had had an ASUS USB drive that performed almost flawlessly. It only failed on Ritek 6x DVD-RW, but ALL drives except Optiarc and LiteOn fail on them. So, I was looking to replace one of my Pioneers with an SATA ASUS. I am DEFINITELY sorry I went that route. ASUS is now also on my crap list. I would return this drive but I've already removed the proof of purchase from the box to send in for a rebate. Bottom line is this drive is junk. Do NOT buy!" Yeah, I ran the 1.33 firmware updater and it asks if I want to update the drives up just exits out after running without doing anything. Would have been nice if they'd SAID something about not being able to update the drives. Fuckers.

Came across someone's older Windows 7 refurbished Dell PC they got for $150. I checked out the DVD drive and noticed something I'd never seen before. The eject button was on the drive's tray itself! I ejected the tray and noticed that the drive appeared to be a slim drive made into the form factor of a full size drive. My guess is it's just a slim drive that was built to full size so it would fit in a full size bay.

It seems that the higher speed rewritable DVD's have a quicker failure rate than the lower speed ones. I'd say on my Ritek 8x DVD+RW, I get maybe 20 rewrites on them before they die. Be aware that the latest firmware on that Pioneer drive probably will bork writing to Ritek 8x DVD+RW. I have a Pioneer BDR-209M and the 1.34-ID60 firmware update caused me to replace it and I will probably never get a Pioneer again. After updating the firmware, all Verifies on that Ritek media fail Verify. Even in other drives. So, it's the writing process that is borked. The same disc then written in my ASUS USB writes and verifies fine.

I've had 2 LG Blu-Ray burners and they lasted about a year before needing replacing for various burn related reasons. So, yours lasted longer than mine. I'll never get another LG drive. I had an LG DVD burner over 10 years ago that was my first clue to avoid them. Every DVD Video it burned had skips in the play back on DVD players. What turned me off to the LG Blu-Ray burners was they were pretty lousy readers. They would fail to read data from discs that my Pioneer would read fine. So, after my last LG died, I replaced it with a Pioneer. Pioneer was doing well until their latest firmware borked Ritek RICOH 8x DVD+RW burns, which would fail on Verify, no matter the drive being used for Verify, so it's a burn issue. I replaced the Pioneer with an ASUS because I have an ASUS external that only failed on one test, Ritek 6x DVD-RW. But, that test always fails, except on LiteOns and Optiarcs. The only reason I got an LG Blu-Ray to begin with was that was all that was available in town. The only store in town that had any Blu-Ray burners was Best Buy and all they had were LG's.

Does this not effect writing to USB drives? I've noticed that if I'm reading from an SATA HDD burning to an SATA burner and there's more HDD activity, then the buffers issue comes into play. However, I don't think I've ever encountered the same issue when writing to USB burners with the read from an SATA HDD. Which, if I think about it makes more sense as the target is not on the same channel as the source. The source is SATA while the target is USB.

BTW, the Windows 10 returning as Windows 8 is a known "issue." It's nothing to be concerned about and will be addressed when ImgBurn is next updated.

As for cheapest, I can't say. That varies from country to country and store to store. I would recommend an ASUS for an external Blu-Ray burner. Mine is currently an ASUS and the only thing it failed on was Ritek 6x DVD-RW, which everything but LiteOns and Optiarcs fail on. While having an external full height drive is not the most ergonomical choice for a laptop, you're better off with one versus a slim drive. My USB ASUS was described on Amazon.com as the BW-12D1S-U/BLK/G/AS So, I really couldn't tell you what to look for, as I doubt that entire string is the actual name of my drive. BW-12D1S-U is most likely the drive string.

Yeah, I hate to say it, but I'd lay the problem down to it being a slim drive. Slim drives are generally junk. We see so many problems here from slim drives and don't recommend them to people looking to buy drives. Your best bet is probably to replace the drive with a full height one and go from there. You could even buy an internal SATA drive and put it in a USB external enclosure.

Yeah, we need a little more information in order to be able to help.

As long as your drive supports them, ImgBurn will. Be aware with M Disc if you're using them for DVD movies, your DVD player must support reading DVD+R. Of course, no modern DVD player SHOULDN'T, but an older one might not. And, of course, your BD burner must support XL media for reading them back in the future after you burn them.

I performed some more tests and I've discovered the borked part of the firmware update is in the writing process. I took one of the failed discs and issued a manual Verify of the image against its contents in the Asus drive that does work. The Verify fails in the Asus, too. Since burns in the Asus pass Verify in the Asus and burns in the Pioneers fail Verifies in the Pioneers and the Asus, the problem is in the writing on the Pioneers' firmware. The issue appears to be random. While most failures are at 99%, near the end of the Verify, some Verifies fail near the start. This indicates that the writing problem is at either the outer or the inner edges.

Do NOT update your Pioneer BD-RW BDR-209M drive with firmware update 1.34-D60 IF you plan on using 8x Ritek DVD+RW Disc ID: RICOHJPN-W21-01. After applying this update to my two copies of this drive, Verifies no longer pass. Burning these same failed discs in my Asus Verify successfully. So, it's the firmware update that borked the drives. The drives were working fine with 1.33 on this media a few hours before applying the 1.34 update. Now, burning these discs in both copies of my Pioneer fail to pass Verify. And these same discs which had just failed in the Pioneers burn fine on the Asus. One of the failing Pioneer drives I've only had for 2 months, so it's highly unlikely it's died already. And since BOTH drives do it after updating the firmware and the Asus does not, it's the firmware. I looked online and there are many horror stories where Pioneer revisions have borked some previously working functionality of media in the drives. My past experience was only good with firmware revisions, as for a year, inkjet MKM 8x Verbatim DataLife Plus DVD+R DL's failed to burn the 2nd layer until a firmware revision fixed that. Now, I'm encountering lots of evidence that Pioneer doesn't know what it's doing. I think Pioneer is on my list now. I can't use my primary rewritable DVD media now except in the Asus. So, I bought an internal Asus to replace one of the Pioneers.

Why is it when an image is being written to a disc, activity on the media where the image being burned is stored can cause Waiting for buffers to recover, but when the Verify is being performed, such activity has never, as far as I can tell, caused a buffer problem? I don't understand why it works one way but not the other. Both functions are dependent on reading the image file from the source media.