dbminter

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.

The problem with finding USB burner firmer is you'll probably NEVER find it. I've NEVER found a single firmware update for ANY external USB burner I've ever had. The problem is in most cases an external drive is just an internal drive inside an enclosure. However, the disc ID string is modified to represent a different drive. Since you're using a USB drive, I have to ask if it's a slim drive or a full size drive? If it's a slim drive, that's most likely your problem. Slim drives are junk. Try a full size drive. Did you try using ImgBurn's check for firmware? In Read or Write mode, right click on the drive in the drop down list and choose the last option, Check for firmware updates. This is probably the best option you'll have for limiting the results. Unless, of course, this is what you already did and that brought up the web page with the results. I don't know if you did the search manually from the ImgBurn log's return of your firmware revision string or not. You're also using RITEK media. While RITEK BD-R and BD-RE has never been a problem for me except for playing back on the PS3, with double layer DVD, Verbatim was the only quality choice that worked. Everything else was crap, except for the TDK ones I tried, which were still readable after a few years. The Ritek's I tried, more than half were unreadable after a year. I can't say if it's the same for double layer BD or not, but you might want to try Verbatim and see if that helps.

When ImgBurn starts up, is the Device listing of Searching for SCSI / ATAPI devices... always sorted by Device number? Regardless of the Device options to sort drives by, say, Drive Letter? I am guessing this list is sorted by Device number because it would be how the devices are listed by Windows? I ask because I see that even if the Devices option to sort by Drive Letter is selected, the devices aren't sorted by drive letter after Searching for SCSI / ATAPI devices... completes.

It probably did eventually read the sectors on a retry. If it really couldn't read the sectors fully, ImgBurn should have prompted out and asked you if you wanted to continue. Why you're probably having issues with the other drive is it's an external one. It's probably a slim, and slim drives are nothing but problematic.

I'm saying they're not related. That's all.

The only other possible issue it could be if it's not a dying HDD is something is interfering with the disc read of that file. Like an antivirus program or some other program had locked the file.

Ah, didn't think of that. Different sectors would probably be written to on the HDD each time.

Yeah, your issue with errors while burning DVD's may have gone away, but the actual issue still is probably there. Why the issues went away simply because you switched DVD media manufacturers escapes me because they aren't related.

I fail to see how that can be at all. The log says the file couldn't be read from C:\. Unless the file failed to read because it couldn't be read first from the DVD. Still, why would the log say it can't read from C:\ if the problem is on a DVD?

Well, you shouldn't be using Memorex CMC media. They're junk. However, that can't be your issue now because you had no problems with them before. You should use Taiyo Yuden, if you can find them, or Verbatim DataLife Plus. Notice I said DataLife Plus and NOT just Verbatim. Verbatim you find in a brick and mortar store or online that isn't DataLife Plus will be CMC. How long have you been burning this drive? Given how you've just started having this problem out of the clear blue, I lean more towards the drive having gone tits up. However, when you say you burn more than one title and it doesn't work but burning one title does work, is a little odd. When you say burning more than 1 title, what exactly do you mean? That you're using more than 1 AVI, etc. type of file in DVD Flick to convert to DVD Video? However, I think your issue may be with your hard drive, after going over the log a second time. You're getting a CRC error on your C:\ drive file being read in. It's failing to read the file from the hard drive. This particular CRC error appears to be coming from your PC's hard drive, not from the DVD+R you're burning. Or whatever C:\ happens to be, which is generally, by default, the Windows partition. Run a scan on C:\ for hard disk errors. Try and rule out that possibility first.

Is the maximum effective read speed of a Verify/Read to image operation the maximum rated write speed of the media being written/read for recordable media? I noticed during a Verify of a 16x DVD-R burn that the maximum effective read speed was 6.6x to 16x. So, would the maximum effective read speed of an 8x DVD+R DL Verify be 8x?

At the end of every Verify operation, and I guess at the end of Read operations, too, since a Verify is basically a Read operation, there's an entry saying Resetting Read Speed. Why is this reset performed at the end of every Read operation? If the speed wasn't reset, would the drive be stuck at whatever it was set at by ImgBurn until it was changed again by something else, like ImgBurn?

I managed to find what I thought were some Memorex 24x Ultra Speed CD-RW. Mitsubishi made those CD-RW's for them so they weren't typical Memorex quality junk. The CD jewel case insert and the box say "Ultra Speed CD-RW 16x-24x." BUT when you open the box and put a disc in a drive, they're actually only rated at 10x! Because Mitsubishi didn't make them! Some horse ID called InfoDisc. I wouldn't be surprised if they're typical CMC Magnetics junk. I know Memorex is as low quality as CMC because they use CMC, but I never actually expected they'd out and out LIE on the package! I have one more Memorex order coming in from Amazon.com because they were also advertised as 24x CD-RW. Regardless of the quality or the truthfulness of this order, I am NEVER buying another Memorex product ever again. They're on my shit list along with Sony, LiteOn, and Optodisc. Memorex used to make a quality CD-RW back in the early 2000's. They used 2nd tier Ritek for their BD-R and BD-RE, but even they were problematic with the PS3. And they were making double DVD cases when no else was that weren't too bad quality. Other than those products, everything I've ever tried from Memorex, including DVD players, have been absolute junk!

Yeah, I'm wondering what the actual issue is. Doesn't seem to be a burning issue here, according to the log. Most likely, the disc isn't booting on his Wii. Which unless it's been modded somehow, Wii's don't play copied game discs. Hm, I never paid attention to the image size. Is a DVD-R 4,700,000,000 bytes, I forget? If it is, that image probably just barely fits then.