LongSoft

For what it's worth... I have recently gone for the AD-7260S / Tempest combination, and it is utterly magnificent. After an initial hiccup (sorted quickly on this forum) I am up and sprinting. The drive is reliable and fast. The enclosure was a pig to disassemble at first, but there are help tips on the Amazon site that helped enormously. My only quibble was with the feet of the enclousre - they have no great grip and the drive slid all over the place at first. Four rubber feet from a local hardware store sorted that out for the princely sum of 50p. This also lessened a very mild vibration at higher read speeds (writing it is almost silent). I think the rigid plastic of the enclosure is to blame for that - it could use a little damping under the lid (a layer of thin foam rubber?). My partner sometimes objects to the audible 'Chonk' the tray makes when a disc is ejected, but I've never come across a properly damped tray on a PC drive (anyone know different?) Perhaps I shouldn't burn discs at three in the morning? I use Verbatim discs exclusively (They even sell them in Asda now!). Have not had a failure for so long I'm sure I'd survive the shock if one did fail. It's the first drive I've ever had that takes all the variations of R and RW without throwing a wobbler on at least one type. I did find the drive was most secure burning at 8x even though it initially tried to burn faster. When it came to copying discs to an image the speed difference between the AD-7260S and the old internal slimline drive was a revelation. Getting this combo was the best decision I've made all year.

Sorted! (sort of). A colleague in our IT dept got interested and suggested that burning FROM a USB device TO a USB device was not a happy match. I copied the source ISO file to the internal HDD and cut the speed of writing to 8x as suggested. Worked like a charm. It's not a happy result because our archive is all on 1TB external drives and now every time I need to burn a disc the file has to first be copied to the HDD. Still, it now works. For the record though, and to help with future debugging: AMD Athlon II P320 dual-core, 2.10Ghz, 3GB RAM Sumvision Tempest enclosure (cheap and cheerful I know, and a pig to put together, but seems ok, I know a few people who have them) Windows Home Premium x64 Thanks for all your help, and Kudos for ImgBurn - a brilliant piece of work in my opinion. Matched by support second-to-none in the business. In the days when I suffered under Nero I would have _killed_ for support half as good as this. LongSoft "Satisfied in Southampton"

Thanks, I was just letting ImgBurn run without tweaking anything compared to my original settings - since I usually make the wrong choices anyway. The screen said it was burning at around 9.something most of the time, took six minutes for the whole burn. I can try setting it manually to a slower speed, but would that really affect the verification phase? The actual burn is perfect each time, it is hanging as the Verify starts - the buffer goes up but then dwindles quickly to nothing and all goes dead. The drive still spins, from then on nothing happens on the ImgBurn screen, I have to switch off the drive and crash ImgBurn to continue. All worked perfectly for the very same source ISO file using the internal SATA slimline burner. Given that the drive is SATA connected to the laptop using the USB connection of the enclosure, what speed would you recommend for Verbatim DVD+Rs? I am not at home at the moment so cannot see the status line - will reply as soon as my shift finishes.

oops, sorry. failed to attach first time. optiarc_error_2.log

Thanks for this: I have cut/pasted the results - don't know if I pressed F8 too early - ignore references to drive E: (the old burner) I pressed F8 before changing to drive J: (the new one). [second attempt - post "too long" so now sent as attachment.

[unable to supply log - log file for this session not created?] Just connected a new Optiarc drive in external USB enclosure. Previously using a slimline drive without problems. The disc burns perfectly (Verbatim DVD+R, tested later on variety of units), but when the tray-recycle is done and Verify cycle begins nothing happens (reports 0 bytes per sec etc). I can STOP the process using the red button, but nothing happens and ImgBurn does not allow me to close down without using Taskmanager, and the drive is still audibly spinning. Waited ten minutes for things to 'time-out' but nothing happened. I checked for the log, but only previous sessions are recorded (because I 'crashed' out?). Obviously the critical thing is that the disc burns properly in the first place; but I -ALWAYS- verify after a few bad experiences in the past, so any suggestions welcome! LongSoft