dbminter

Last time I used Maxell DVD-R (Maybe +R.) like a decade ago, they were Ritek.

I'm going by experience simply trying to put ODD's into cases. It was always struggle for me because of my large hands. And, working with screws is a bit difficult for that reason. That's why I used to buy thumbscrews for ODD's until they started making the case interiors so cramped that the panels wouldn't go back on with thumbscrews attached. I use BD-RE for my bootable stuff, even if it fits on a CD or DVD-5. Because BD-RE writes faster, unless you're dealing with a sizeable DVD-5, which once you reach a certain amount of space written to 8x DVD+RW, the speed increase is faster than a 2x BD-RE. It takes about 2.5 minutes of writing data to an 8x DVD+RW before the full 8x kicks in, writing at only 6x. (Optiarc DVD writers never had this limitation, though, always going to 8x from the start.) I do write a good number of Macrium Reflect Rescue Media, which are bootable, so I have dedicated BD-RE since those reach only about 700 MB.

I had an Amazon.com page bookmarked for a 212 burner soon. Today, it was listed as In Stock Soon. Order Now. However, I highly doubt they will get any more stock, considering if Pionner did discontinue the 212 line in favor of a 213. The good news is by the time I can get the money together for the 212, the 213 may be available for me to test with. I'm curious if the Pioneer works well with the Imation 8x DVD+RW. They have a different MID to the Ricoh/Ritek 8x DVD+RW that I still have that were discontinued. It was those discontinued ones which the Pioneer firmware has had such difficulty with, but maybe the MID of the Imation ones work better.

I can't really build my own rig because of the size of my hands. I'm 6 foot 6 and a half and my hands are pretty large. It's difficult to work inside of a tower for me. So, I've never built my own machines. I just get Dell's, which I'm (Generally.) happy with. Dell's used to have 2 half height bays in them until like 4 years ago, when I got my first Dell that had a slim BD in it.

If I had a PC tower that supported half height bays and had 2 of them, I would keep 2 BD drives. The WH16NS60 for reading and writing DVD, CD, and BR-RE and a Pioneer for BD-R. Unlike the NS60, on Pioneer models, you actually can get 16x write speeds on 16x BD-R. However, my tower only has 1 slim bay in it, so my NS60 is housed in a VanTech USB 3.0 enclosure. I used to rock dual ODD's in my towers back when they made PC's with half height bays and had an extra one in them. I had a Pioneer BD and a LiteOn for DVD and CD.

Regressing the firmware on Pioneer BD drives was never officially supported by the company. As you said, the updaters themselves strictly state you "can't" go back, even though, of course, you can... just with a little outside help. Years ago, LUK directed me to an unsupported utility that lets you regress the firmware back. You just extract the firmware package from the updater and feed it into the utility. I only use CD and DVD for playing Audio CD and DVD Video. Everything else goes to BD-R for storage, even if it fits on a smaller media. With the price of BD-R being what it is, it's affordable enough to "waste" the space to get the longer life storage of BD-R. The only reason I'm using DVD+RW at all is for temporary DVD Video discs to test before I make the final DVD-R of things like my VHS tape library I've been converting to DVD over the last 2 years.

The WH does include a disc of software. Some PowerDVD stuff and a few other utilities from the same company. I just got a WH last week and got yet another of those discs which I don't need. As I said, it's been a while since I had a BH, but I think the WH also had some faster write speeds for BD media versus the BH. But, that could be fixed by firmware updates, you'd think.

BTW, I'm curious about your Ritek 8x DVD+RW. What is the MID on these you wrote in a Pioneer drive and which Pioneer drive was it, if it was, in fact, a Pioneer that you wrote them in? As far as I know, Ritek is the only manufacturer still making 8x DVD+RW. And they can only be purchased in Imation branded discs. If you can find other Ritek 8x DVD+RW, let me know where you got them. I've got a few left over Ricoh/Ritek branded 8x DVD+RW that I bought 4 years ago when Amazon.com had only 3 of these left: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000B8FRF4/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 I bought them out of stock. The only Ritek 8x DVD+RW I can find now are these: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00E3G32O8/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 They don't have to be Ritek. If you can find ANY 8x DVD+RW, let me know where you got them.

No, not incredibly bad luck. Repeated tests bear out it's the firmware. I try unformatted discs: failure. I then regress the firmware back: success. I then try fully formatting a disc that had failed after regressing the firmware back: success. Repeated unformatted disc tests for years bear out the same results. Your success MAY have been on a Pioneer, BUT it was definitely written on a different drive. Initially, some Pioneer firmware would work IF the disc was first fully formatted on a different drive. Any formatting the Pioneer firmware would do failed. However, even that workaround eventually stopped working. Discs formatted in other drives, like the LG WH16NS60, would also fail on future Pioneer firmware.

Your most likely culprit is the CMC MAG DVD+R DL's you're using. CMC Magnetics makes the worst discs out there. (Ironically, they also own the company that releases the best, too!) MKM DVD+R DL from Verbatim DataLife Plus are the only reliable make of DVD+R DL out there. However, you said you were unable to procure MKM discs. Still, I think that's going to be your only solution.

I forget because it's been so long since I had a BH LG drive, but is the difference between it and the WH that the WH supports M-Disc and the BH doesn't? I forget if the BH model supported M-Disc writing.

For the past 5 or so years, Pioneer BD drives have had 2 fatal flaws. The first is they will always fail to write to Ricoh/Ritek 8x DVD+RW media, when they used to write fine up until like 1.03 firmware on some model from years ago. Ever since, they will always fail Verify, even when using unformatted discs. If you regressed the drive back to 1.02 firmware, writing was fine. Every firmware since has had this flaw. I keep telling Pioneer about it, every time I try one of their later models to see if they fixed it, but they refuse to. The MID is listed in the master media list, so there shouldn't be these compatibility issues, and there weren't until after like 1.03 of the firmware for that model. Also for the past few years, BD-RE from Ritek/Memorex refuse to Verify at anything beyond 2.1x for the vast majority of Verify time. So, it takes about twice as long to Verify a full BD-RE as it should. This is the 2nd fatal flaw in the firmware. Plus, the last Pioneer model I tried had no staying power whatsoever. Pioneer replaced it after before 2 months, when it died, and the replacement died after 2 months, too, necessitating a refund. All of these things turned me off from Pioneer, which I used to love. Pioneer made the first ODD I ever had that lasted beyond 2 years. I got 2.5 years out of that BD drive.

Ah, I was not aware the Optiarc was still in manufacture. I used to love those. They were my drives of choice until they disappeared, as far as I could tell. I use BD burners now, so I wouldn't get an Optiarc, but it's nice to hear they still make those. Thanks for pointing out about the Pioneer 213 line coming out. I was about to try a 212 again to see if Pioneer had fixed the glaring issues with the drives/firmware that turned me off of their models. But, if a new one is coming out possibly next month, I'll wait to see if a 213 is available.

That may have been the reason I couldn't get it to work all those years ago. I knew the Guide was a tad bit out of date and didn't think it might be a UEFI thing.

It's up to the user. You get lifetime, as far as I'm aware, upgrades for $20, but if you never use the software again, it can be pretty hard to justify the $20 for a one time use. I use it every time an update to Macrium Reflect comes out, as well as at the start of each new year when I move the monthly file backups to bootable Reflect recovery media with the image files on them. So, for me it was worth it.

As I said, I followed the guides a long time ago and never could get a bootable Windows disc. The ISO's when burnt to optical discs would never boot. Tried to get the same with Acronis True Image bootable discs. Attempting to build new discs never worked, which is why I resorted to UltraISO to inject/remove new files into bootable disc ISO's. I'd use ImgBurn to read the bootable discs to ISO and then UltraISO to edit the ISO's and ImgBurn to then, again, burn the UltraISO ISO's. to disc.

My guess is what happened the disc was used by something else like Nero before ImgBurn got to it. Nero notoriously leaves discs in incomplete statuses after writing to them. As LUK said, did you attempt a full erase/format in ImgBurn 2.5.8.0 before trying 2.4.4.0? I would be interested to see performing a full erase in 2.5.8.0 and then attempting a 2nd erase in 2.5.8.0. If the 2nd erase fails, then try the full erase with 2.4.4.0. If THAT works, then it would probably be worth something investigating as that is repeatable. I have years of ImgBurn installers archived. I may still have 2.4.4.0 and can test this myself if warranted.

Honestly, I never had any luck making any bootable discs using the guides or doing what the OP is attempting. What I do in a situation like this is use something that can inject or remove files from an ISO, like UltraISO, my choice. Then, I use ImgBurn to write the ISO UltraISO makes. UltraISO, however, is not freeware.

As I said, I've never burned an XBox game. Never have even owned a Microsoft console. So, I'm just going by general experience with burning discs and what I remembered from past posts about XBox burning. As LUK said, try the MKM discs which are the Verbatim DataLife Plus I recommended. However, you indicate you've used this drive before for burning XBox games. If you've also used the same DVD+R DL discs from Ritek that were working before but aren't anymore, that might indicate the drive needs replacing.

Oh, wait, I just noticed something from the log. You're using a slim model DVD burner. I've never burned XBox games, but last I recall, you needed a specific kind of DVD burner with a special firmware for properly writing XBox games that play. They were made before the creation of slim model drives, I think.

As I said, be sure you avoid the Verbatim Life Series you find in stores. They will be worse than the Ritek DVD+R DL. The DataLife Plus can only be found in online stores. If the problem persists, I'd look into your burner being the problem. It might need replacing.

Have you always used the same DVD+R DL discs for burning XBox games? I am drawn to this line in the log: I 12:16:41 Destination Media Type: DVD+R DL (Disc ID: RICOHJPN-D01-67) Generally, the only reliable DVD+R DL discs are the Verbatim DataLife Plus (NOT Life Series.) MKM's made by Mitsubishi.

The cable movement thing may be a sign of something else. It could indicate a failing cable or a failing USB port on either the drive enclosure or on your PC. You may want to try replacing the USB cable or try putting the cable in a different USB port on your PC. Plus, is this a USB 2.x or USB 3.0? USB 2.x, while technically possible, is not recommended for BD burners because of the throughput necessary for operation. If you're connected by USB 2.x, then movement of the cable could affect the burn.

It probably is LiteOn specific. I haven't used LiteOn in about a decade, which is about how long ago I remember last encountering record count.

Oh, you're concerned that the record count will somehow trigger a finite number of burns limitation? No. The record count just keeps track of how many discs the drive has burned. While there is a finite number of discs a drive will burn before it dies, and that varies based on how long the drive will last and how hard it's been used, it has nothing to do with the record count. There's no arbitrary limit that is triggered by the record count where a drive will stop burning discs. And ImgBurn doesn't care what the record count is beyond displaying it. It's been a long time since I've seen a record count returned by ImgBurn on a drive I've had. I had even forgotten it was a feature. It was that long ago.