Apples555

I had no choice, the only two internal DVD drives available new are LG and ASUS. I don't think Pioneer even makes DVD drives anymore.

I picked up the LG burner I linked to earlier. All is well, verify completes fine and DVDs, even DLs, don't skip at all.

Why is it that only burning suffers? I have decades-old optical drives that read as well as they did new, but now I've had two burners fail. They too seem to have no problem reading, now that I think about it. Also, any suggestions for a new drive? Or does it not matter really (as long as it's not slimline). I just burned a single layer DVD-R that skips all over the place on the 5.25" drive. It's really getting worse by the day.

I just tried burning another DL disc with the GS23N and got a focus servo error at the layer break. I also cleaned the lens. What causes a drive to fail this way?

What's a good drive available now? There's this, but the reviews are bad. I've had good experiences with Goldstar/LG drives in the past. Interestingly, the HL-DT-ST burns significantly better CDs than the PLDS, but the PLDS burns better DVD-Rs, and both can't write DLs.

And the 5.25" drive log.

I've had this problem for something like 3 years. I kept hoping it would resolve itself, but it never happened. I have two drives. An HL-DT-ST GS23N in a MacBook Pro and a PLDS DH-16AES 5.25" drive. Both will not produce DVDs or CDs that don't skip, if they ever finish a burn. For years I used cheap media and assumed that was the problem. Recently, I got Verbatim DL media hoping to finally solve this problem. No dice. The GS23N now fails halfway through on Verbatims. Here is a log of the most recent failed burn. The 5.25" drive will fail at 99% verify on DLs, though it will burn single layers fine, and with OPC enabled the single-layers don't even skip too much. What's going on here?