dbminter

Yep! Sony has definitely let the quality slide on the PS3 if the new slim line specs are true! They're replacing the slot loading drive with a top loading drive! The PS1 had one and there was a reason why they replaced it in the PS2! Top loading drives just aren't as good as tray loading drives. Not that the PS3 has a tray loading drive, actually. It's just front loading.

Hence my comments on Sony quality. I got a Sony BD-RE that I had to return to the store in under a week and a half and less than 5 total writes because it stopped writing! It failed to fully format/erase after an hour crapping out in ImgBurn. It had also developed a crack at the center ring.

How old is the drive? My last Optiarc I had needed replacing after 6 months. It developed a problem that when the tray was ejected, every time the tray was vibrated, like, say, removing a disc that had just been ejected after a burn, the tray would reload! I swapped in another drive in its place and the problem went away because the problem's with Sony. Yeah, I'm on another Sony rant, but, it's only because Sony used to make a good product up until about 5 years ago. My previous Optiarc before that had to be replaced after only a year itself! I stopped getting Optiarcs and switched to Lite-Ons. Lite-Ons are a little slower in writes but, I'd rather not have to open up the PC case every half a year and swap in a new Optiarc than get the slightly faster write speeds of the Optiarc.

I've burned 2 Verbatim MCC DVD+R DL's and 2 Verbatim MCC Lightscribe 16x DVD-R's in the replacement drive. Usually, the DVD-R's would crap out by now, burning 1 and then failing on the next. So, I'll see how it continues to go.

Got my replacement Lite-On iHAS 224 Lightscribe SATA DVD burner today and have installed it. The initial test is looking good towards this drive working. I ran a read test on the Lite-On non Lightscribe SATA DVD burner before installing the iHAS 224. Average Read Rate: 8.7x Maximum Read Rate: 12.2x Operation Time: 10:49 On the same disc in the iHAS 224. Average Read Rate: 8.7x Maximum Read Rate: 16.0x Operation Time: 10:48 I even got a higher Max Read Rate on the iHAS 224. The 224 I returned was reading at half the rate of the Lite-On non Lightscribe SATA DVD burner. I won't know for sure until I can get a couple of Lightscribe MCC 16x Verbatim DVD-R's burned under my belt to see if they crap out during Verfiy.

Memorex also uses Ritek for their BD-RE. That's some good news. No longer using CMC. Hopefully, they'll keep this upward trend and return to where they were when they used to use MCC for their DVD+R and DVD-R, as well as quality CD-RW, 4x in the ancient days, and that they use MCC for their 24x CD-RW.

So, now Sony wants to make the PS 3 even slimmer. Well, that's their customer's business if they want to reduce quality even further!

Also discovered something else the Playstation 3 doesn't like. It doesn't like Ritek BD-R's, not playing back navigation properly. And, if you create a Blu-Ray Video disc in ImgBurn with BDMV and CERTIFICATE folders, the PS 3 won't play them! My Panasonic Blu-Ray stand alone Blu-Ray palyer does. Yet another nail in the coffin that is Sony quality.

Ah, Sony, thy name is quality! My Sony BD-RE stopped writing anymore! It's been less than a week and about 5 total writes before crapping out. Tried Full Erase on it, got this: I 12:00:10 Erasing Disc... W 13:02:12 Potential 'WaitImmediateIO' Deferred Error - (0%, 0/4) - Session Fixation Error E 13:02:14 Failed to Erase Disc! - Reason: Session Fixation Error E 13:02:28 Operation Failed! - Duration: 01:02:04 Turns out Memorex uses Ritek on their BD-R's. The Sony BD-RE also developed a large crack at its center hole shortly after opening it!

Well, that made NO sense, but, I fixed the problem. I rebuilt the Windows icon cache, which has NEVER worked for me before in the past when uninstalling Windows 7 Manager broke all my icons and couldn't be fixed. This makes no sense as I said because I restored down Windows partition images made when the icons were working, so, the cache would have been restored, too. So, rebuilding the cache should not have fixed the problem. But, it did. Go figure.

Now I've got another unfixable problem! Some of my programs icons have disappeared! Even restoring back to a point when I know these icons in question worked. My tests with a factory default partition indicate the only solution is to reinstall everything. If I have to do that, might as well get a whole new computer. Get USB 3.0 ports, Windows 7 SP 1 pre-installed, get a case with an internal form that is easier to work inside than this Dell, which has a rotten interior form, and get a case where I don't have to remove the front bezel just to install a DVD drive. I've always hated this Dell's bezel.

I did it again and got better data this time around. So, it must have been a fluke. It's at 9.9x right now, 4:33 elapsed, 6:30 to go. 10 minutes on average is what I'm used to getting.

Well, I get read rates on DVD-ROM that are comparable to my other drives, but, I'm getting really slow read rates in one particular field that only I would do. I sometimes have .DVD and image parts stored on a DVD+R DL that I need to mount and read from the drive. In my Blu-Ray drive, I'm getting: I 16:23:34 Operation Successfully Completed! - Duration: 00:11:52 I 16:23:34 Average Read Rate: 11,133 KB/s (8.0x) - Maximum Read Rate: 17,014 KB/s (12.3x) That is the rate I used to get on the other SATA channel. I tried it in the Dell SATA Lite-On on the same disc, and only got like 3x read to take about 30 to 40 minutes.

Well, I think I have sussed it out. It is most likely a faulty new Lite-On SATA Lightscribe drive. Here's my read test results: Drive Name Average Read Rate Maximum Read Rate Total Read Time SATA Lightscribe Lite-On 4.4x 6.3x 21:44 SATA Blu-Ray Lite-On 8.5 12.1 11:12 USB Lightscribe Lite-On 8.5 13.9 11:14 SATA Dell Lite-On 8.5 12.3 11:15 Notice the consistent values from the last 3 drives. All had the same Average Read Rate. The Maximum Read Rates for 2 drives were only .2x apart. The Total Read Times are only within 3 seconds difference maximum of each other. But, notice the values of the possibly bad drive in question are half the values of the other 3 drives. It takes nearly twice as long to read. So, I think that puts the nail in this issue. It's the SATA Lightscribe Lite-On. I'm going to return it and get a different Lightscribe SATA Lite-On.

Well, it's currently 93 degrees Fahrenheit outside, after some much needed Believe it or not, that's a 14 degree drop from last week's record high temps! It got 107 Thursday and Friday!

I've noticed when having a UDF+ISO 9660 file system in Build mode that if I add a file larger than 4 GB, ImgBurn says to change the file system to UDF. Which I guess makes sense given that ISO 9660 must have a 4 GB file size limit, but, UDF does not. My suggestion is, though, to let ImgBurn ask if it should automatically change the file system for you. Like it does when you have a non UDF 1.02 file system and you import a VIDEO_TS folder. It will automatically change it from, say, UDF 2.06 to 1.02 for you if you tell it to when it asks. So, I was thinking maybe ImgBurn can automatically make that change for the user, too.

I'm beginning to think my problem all along is a bad Lite-On SATA Lightscribe drive that I just got. It's the one that wasn't writing to Verbatim MCC Lightscribe DVD-R's correctly and now it takes 22 minutes to read a DVD-9 that my SATA Lite-On Blu-Ray drive and my USB Lite-On drive read in 12 minutes. So, I'm going to swap out this Lightscribe SATA drive for another Lite-On, the one that came with my Dell is hardly ever used, and see how it reads the same disc.

Sony apparently makes their own BD-RE discs. The DID on mine is SONY-ES1-001.

So, maybe Dell isn't on my list now.

There is some evidence that lends credence to the above theory. The burns I had completed in the Lightscribe SATA Lite-On were done to 8x DVD+RW's. I only received my Verbatim MCC DVD-R's Friday. So, it could be that that drive does not like that media, yet could also explain why the USB Lite-On, a different model, has no problem with them.

I'm starting to wonder if it's this LiteOn Lightscribe SATA drive that doesn't like Verbatim MCC DVD-R's. I forget, but, I started having problems with them towards the end of my last stack on a different LiteOn SATA drive. So, I can't explain that. I burned one in the Blu-Ray burner without a problem. So, I'm going to swap back in the 64 bit Dell, put the Blu-Ray in as my primary burner and the Lightscribe SATA as my reader and Lightscribe label burner and see how well that does.

Well, that didn't fucking take long! Got another LCE-Uncorrectable error on Verify! With Verbatim MCC DVD-R in LiteOn Lightscribe SATA in the 32 bit PC! I'll just have to use them in the USB drive.

Well, I swapped out the 64 bit Dell and swapped in the 32 bit PC, with the LiteOn SATA Lightscirbe drive installed. Burned a Verbatim MCC DVD-R 16x in it. It burned at 14x max. Verify did NOT fail. So, Dell is now on my shit list as this Dell needs replacing.

Reset the BIOS again, burned again, Verify crapped out with Logical Block Address out of range. This was on the Dell, though, which I'm not surprised it did at.

Well, got my PC back from Best Buy. As I predicted, nothing untoward happened when they checked it out! The only thing out of the ordindary was they tested a burn with Windows Image Burner and it appeared to be stuck infinitely at the end of its verify. So, I got the PC back home and they had given me a CMC MAG crap disc to test burn with. It Verified fine, BUT it was stuck at 8x max writing on a 16x media that ImgBurn said was inserted and the drive is a 16x DVD-R rated drive. So, I tried burning with one of my Verbatims; it, too, is capped out at 8x! BUT, it did Verify without error. I am using the same image I had tested and it had failed before taking the PC into Best Buy. They even used ImgBurn and the same test image I had been using and couldn't get an LCE-Uncorrectable error or Logical Block Address error on Verfiy on their crap CMC MAG discs. So, I don't know what's up. The drives now appear to work, but, are capped at 8x maximum writes. I'm going to swap in the 32 bit machine and see if the situation improves. If it does, then, it's this Dell and Dell is company. It will have to be replaced.