dbminter

Yes, things really did go downhill that fast for Pioneer. The DVD+RW thing has been there probably longer than that, which was what initially drove me away from Pioneer. One firmware update fixed the problem, but all future firmware updates regressed the issue back in. About a year or so ago, I tried Pioneer again, since they had a new hardware model. Thought I'd hope against hope that they'd fixed their issues. Turns out, it was actually worse. I think the only real difference between the LG BH and WH models is a case similar to the Pioneers you linked. The WH16 simply replaced the BH models. Both support M-Disc, BD XL, and both appear to have the same maximum write speeds. The difference between the WH16NS40 and NS60 is the NS60 supports UHD. That's why the NS40 is cheaper, but I recommend the NS60 over the NS40 because the NS40 fails 9 times out of 10 to write BD-R/RE DL media. What country are you trying to find NS60's in?

The only real "difference," most likely, is the S12XLT is the model that superceded the 212EBK. Meaning, it's replaced the other model, but the 212EBK stock is still available. Pioneer is known to do this: replace older models with newer ones that do the same thing while still offering stock of the older model. However, I would recommend you forego any Pioneer BD burners. Pioneer used to make the best BD burners out there. Had one that lasted for 2 and a half years before it needed replacing, unparalleled in a world where, normally, optical drives need replacing every 7 months, on average. Over the years, though, their quality has really turned into . I recently tried a 212 that Pioneer had to ultimately refund my money on. It died before 2 months! Plus, for years, the Pioneer BD firmware does not properly write to Ritek 8x DVD+RW and Pioneer refuses to do anything about it! There are basically 3 manufacturers to choose from for BD burners: Pioneer, LG, and ASUS. The one with the FEWEST issues is LG, IF you get the RIGHT LG BD burner. The WH16NS60 is my recommendation. It has no deal killers, just a few execution choices that make it a slower read and writer, in some cases, than the Pioneer. However, slower reads and writes are better than catastrophic failures, which are in the Pioneer and ASUS models. You may be tempted to get LG's WH16NS40 since it's cheaper. If you don't plan on writing BD DL media, which the NS40 says it supports but does not properly write to, you can get that. The NS60 supports the M-Disc you're looking for, and I think the NS40 did, too.

If you have a preexisting image set that ImgBurn has already created, you can create an MDS file with the Create MDS File option under Tools. To always have ImgBurn create an MDS file whenever it creates an image, under Tools --> Settings, set the following: Build --> Page 1 --> Create Image File Layout --> Choose either Auto or Yes --> Image Layout File Format --> Check the MDS box --> OK

What it sounds like you want is some kind of Blu-Ray authoring program. Since you specifically mention .SRT files, it sounds like you have some kind of downloaded video file with a separate subtitles .SRT file for it. Unless the Blu-Ray player you intend on using this video file on specifically reads .SRT files for containers, burning the .SRT file anywhere on the disc won't cause the subtitles to appear. You'd need to use some kind of Blu-Ray or DVD authoring program to combine the .SRT into the new video container. I use ConvertXToDVD for DVD authoring, which does support adding .SRT files to output, but 1.) it's paid software and 2.) you may not want to convert to DVD but to Blu-Ray or to another container file. The same company does offer similar software to make Blu-Ray video, though.

I'd blame your drive. It's a slim model one, and most slim models are junk. The only slim model I've ever seen that was near usable was LG's BU40N that came in my Dell XPS 8930 desktop. And there's a "Verbatim" model I have from Office Depot, but I don't know who actually made that. It is a slim USB model that I use entirely for reading, but I've rarely, if ever, tested its write capabilities because I never had a reason to use anything but a half height burner because of all the horror stories I've heard of writing discs with slim model burners. I'd first try replacing your drive with something else. Preferably an external model that is not a slim, aka a half height model, as that would be easiest to install. What I use is the LG WH16NS60 in a Vantech USB 3.0 enclosure. However, you may not need a Blu-Ray burner. If you do get the NS60, be sure to get a USB 3.0 enclosure as 2.x won't be fast enough for a BD burner.

If it's an internal drive, the age of the PC doesn't factor into when an optical drive will die off. Optical drives, internal or otherwise, have an average time before failure of about 7 months.

We'll need the entire log for this failed burn. One thing that sticks out is what the drive is apparently returning in terms of error information. It seems it's returning a range of sectors starting with sector # -22 through sector # -1.

Semaphore time out errors are generally caused by a conflict between the USB bridge in the external enclosure and the USB controller on your motherboard. First thing to rule out, make sure you're connecting the USB BD burner by USB 3.x instead of USB 2.x. USB 2.x is generally too slow to support BD burning and could be the cause of such an error in this case. Second, you say it only occurs on BD DL discs. What about regular BD SL discs? If it's one and not the other, it could be the manufacturer of that BD DL disc is not properly supported in the BD burner's firmware. Third, you're using the BW 16D1HT, which I consider junk. That drive has never worked right from its inception. Upon release, the original firmware DESTROYED DVD+RW and BD-RE on attempts to write to it. After 2 or 3 years, firmware updates fixed this issue, but did NOT fix the inability to properly write DVD+R DL's correctly without failing. So, I returned the last 16D1HT I got after I tried it again to see if firmware updates had fixed the issues I'd found before. It fixed the DVD+RW and BD-RE issues, but I then discovered it cannot write to DVD+R DL. I'd recommend you swap out that drive and get an LG WH16NS60 and a Vantech USB 3.0 enclosure. I've used those for years. DON'T get the WH16NS40 to save money because it doesn't have UHD BD on it. The NS40 does NOT properly write to BD DL media. It will fail 9 times out of 10.

Is this drive connected internally or in a USB enclosure?

Um, if I'm understanding what the question may be here, you're asking does ImgBurn return things like CRC errors if it cannot read data from bad sectors on a source device? ImgBurn should return an error that it cannot read the source file if the source file is on a bad sector on the source device. You should generally get a Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC) error.

Is it required or optional for BD-R? I saw it on my most recent BD-R burn and it made me curious as to what exactly it did.

What exactly does Reserving Track do? Other than reserve track, obviously. I guess the better question is why is it necessary to reserve the track? Thanks!

Some people do have compatibility problems with Ritek discs on their devices. They're not as bad as CMC, though, so that isn't as bad a concern here. If you were able to copy the contents successfully from the burned disc and some of those files opened correctly, a successful Read of this disc to a new image file should be a good indication that the disc is okay. Not 100% guaranteed, though.

When you say they're readable on 2 PC's, what exactly did you do to test their readability? Did you attempt to use ImgBurn to Read this burned CD-R back to an image file? If the Read job completes okay, the discs are probably all right. However, if they're cheap media, like CMC discs, and the info LUK asked you to post will most likely tell who made the CD-R, some people's players may not read them at all or have problems playing them back at some point.

Wait, you've been connecting this BD drive by USB 2.x? Those cables have white ends which indicates USB 2.x connections. It shouldn't even be working right at all on either PC if you do that. Try not using that cable at all but a dedicated USB 3.0 cable on a USB 3.0 port on the PC where the burns are failing. See if that helps. Don't get the WH16NS40 if you plan on burning BD-R DL or BD-RE DL. It absolutely will fail 90% of the time, regardless of media and the drive's claims it can burn double layer BD discs. It cannot do it properly. I know this from experience with multiple copies of the NS40 over years of use. That's why I got the NS60. It can. I don't care for UHD either, but that's now why I got it.

Well, there's no guarantee, but SATA is a separate connection methodology on the mobo versus the USB. So, you may have better luck connecting directly by SATA. It has other advantages, too. For instance, if you have a communication failure over USB for different reasons, the drive may simply just stop doing anything. SATA connected drives will generally return some kind of error. I also was wondering what you were talking about when you said a Y cable. That must be one end for connecting by USB 2.x and the other by USB 3.0? What I do is buy a half height, e.g. internal, 5.25" BD drive and put it in an external USB enclosure. I use the LG WH16NS60 BD drive and the VanTec USB 3.0 enclosure for my purposes.

If it's a BD drive, do not connect to USB 2.x. USB 2.x does not have the necessary speed to keep up with communicating to a BD drive and will, almost always, fail to burn if you connect a BD drive by USB 2.x. Trying to replace the drive with something other than the same manufacturer and model might be the only solution. Since the drive works on one PC but not on the other, there is something "wrong" on the PC where it doesn't work. Now, this may be as simple as there is a conflict between the USB bridge inside your BD drive and the USB controller on your mobo. If that's the case, the only solution is to replace the bridge, the controller on the mobo, or the drive. Replacing the drive is far easier and cheaper than replacing the USB bridge or the controller on the mobo or getting a whole new mobo, of which you're not sure it will work. You know it's not the drive or cable as the BD drive works on one computer but not the other. So, whichever device it's failing on is the culprit. Now, whether that's down to a hardware error or a software error from some kind of corruption in Windows configuration or a bad driver update or corrupt driver, you could spend years trying to nail that down and get nowhere.

Also, just to rule out the possibility it's the cause, are you using the same USB cable with this drive on both the PC that works and the one that doesn't? If you're using a different USB cable on the PC that works but not on the PC that doesn't, it could be the cable. Most people don't use different cables on different devices, but I'm ruling it out here in case it is.

It is called Prefer Properly Formatted Discs.

Admittedly, it's not consistent. I once wrote a disc in ImgBurn many years ago. It sat around until I got to reusing it again. ImgBurn then said it needed a full proper format, so it apparently hadn't been fully written to before by a past version of ImgBurn. The requiring properly formatted discs maybe wasn't always present in the software? Like maybe 15 years when it first came out and this disc was initially written? Also, isn't a Windows format not really a format? For instance, an unformatted disc in ImgBurn requires a zeroing out of all sectors initially before it can be written to. I think with Windows you can just pop them in and it doesn't require a full format. Which may be why ImgBurn said the discs weren't fully erased to. I think I put in an unformatted DVD+RW and tried to use it as a giant floppy once. Expecting a full zeroing as with ImgBurn, I remember being shocked at how quickly the giant floppy formatting was. So, it seems Windows does not require full formats of optical media to be used?

If you're formatting discs in ImgBurn but then using them to write in another optical disc burning application, like say Nero, that other application is probably not properly writing to the discs, leaving them in an improper state. I do know that in the past, Nero did not properly write to rewritable media. When I put in discs Nero had burned into ImgBurn, it asked to properly format them, even though Nero had done so before.

Is there such a thing as unique DVD disc "serial numbers" on DVD+RW? I ask because, if there were, I'd be able to implement a system I wanted to try. To mark down a disc's unique ID and count the number of times I've written to that unique DVD+RW disc. I wanted to keep a spreadsheet of how may times I'd written a particular DVD+RW. It seems to me, unless there is some kind of unique serial number hardcoded onto a disc, my only option is to take a marker and write a unique ID on the top surface. However, I can't do this unless I stop using cake stacks to store discs and store them in CD cases as the ink could potentially smear/bleed onto the data surface of the disc above it, ruining it for future use. Thanks!

Yes, with all the available information, I'd say there's an issue with the USB port or controller on the PC where the burns are failing. Did you try connecting the USB BD burner to different USB ports on the PC where it's failing?

Well, it would, of course, depend on what the source drive is and what the target drive is. For instance, if the target is an SSD, it will write faster than if the source was used as the target and the source was a mechanical HDD. Plus, if you're using the same source as the target, there will be slow down in writing because the device is having to do both reading, processing, and writing all simultaneously. But, generally, yeah, you'll get faster processing if you're using different devices for the source and the target.

Good to know I haven't forgotten my batch programming after so long.