Hi! I'll get straight to the point - I am looking to put an end to this silly "semaphore timeout" business that has so many people pulling their hair out while trying to burn dual layer DVDs (and more specifically, burning 360 backups to dual layer DVDs).
My drive is a tsst corp sh-s222a, but after extensive (and fruitless) googling, it is obvious that the problem is not unique to my drive (if it is even related to it). The error is not with the ISO or DVD file, they are abgx checked etc and are fine.
The error message I get is "Set L0 Data Zone Capacity Failed! - Reason: The semaphore timeout period has expired." (using ImgBurn). I will include the full imgburn log at the end of this post for reference.
I mentioned the hair-pulling because after my searching, I have found myriad helpful suggestions for fixing the issue, but nothing that works.
For example, it is suggested that you...
- upgrade firmware
- fix DMA settings (in device manager, or BIOS settings on boot, or by uninstalling and reinstalling IDE controllers)
- Get different media (I am using Verbatim 8x dual layer DVD+R discs... Yes, the ones made in INDIA :eek:... but I am 99.9% certain this is not the issue)
- Run CHKDSK to check for bad sectors causing the semaphore timeout error
- Various basic things like restarting PC, unplugging + reconnecting drive etc etc...
-Blah blah, no need to bore you further
So the upshot is... None of that works. The closest I have found to a straight answer (but still not quite there) on the subject is along the lines of "the problem is with reading the file on the hard drive, not burning it" - the suggestion there was to fix dma settings and run chkdsk, neither of which seem to fix the problem. I recently (i.e. yesterday) reformatted both my home computers (for unrelated reasons), and that didn't change anything.
So, what I would like to ask you wizards in the know about such technical dual-layered mysteries is: will there still be problems burning the image if you try burning an image located on a brand-spanking-new HDD? If not, what else can be done to fix this?
Another thought that has occurred to me (after reading several posts bringing the reliability of external DVD writers into question) is - if you were to gut an external DVD writer and put the component into a desktop pc (this applies to me - my pc obviously does not currently have an internal dual layer dvd writer), would this solve the problem?
Thanks for reading, and even more thanks if you have any help!
Regards, AngryPanda.
P.S. Here is the imgburn log I mentioned at the start...
I 17:36:20 ImgBurn Version 2.4.4.0 started!
I 17:36:20 Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition (5.1, Build 2600 : Service Pack 3)
I 17:36:20 Total Physical Memory: 1,562,732 KB - Available: 739,024 KB
I 17:36:20 Initialising SPTI...
I 17:36:20 Searching for SCSI / ATAPI devices...
I 17:36:21 Found 1 DVD