BD-R is blank after burning.

[Tom7272]

Using verbatim BD-R (6x speed, printable surface)

The drive is HL-DT-ST BD-RE BH16NS40

Burning at 4x.

ImgBurn burns the whole disk, then fails at verification with "Failed to Read Sectors 0 - 31 - Reason: L-EC Uncorrectable Error".

It took over 20 minutes to finish - so it has been doing "something". But the disk appears empty in windows explorer, but I can see a faint darker ring on it - is it burned or not?

 

I experienced similar problems last time I burned Blu-ray disks a couple months ago - various programs failing to write (eg infrarecorder, burnaware), then ImgBurn worked ok on same disk/drive. And now it doesn't.

Is this some random issue? Bad disks? Broken drive?

Please see attached log.

imgburn issue.txt

[dbminter]

If you check the bottom of the disc and see two different colors in the ring, one darker than the other, the darker area is the part that was burned.

 

This could be your issue:

I 02:20:48 Destination Media Type: BD-R (Disc ID: CMCMAG-BA5-000)

 

CMC Magnetics makes the worst optical media out there.  (Ironically enough, they own Verbatim, which also distributes the best media out there.  Though they don't always MAKE their own best media.)  It's not unusual to get a package of discs where some work fine but others don't.  Do you have an image of the packaging you can link?  It's a bit odd for Verbatim BD-R to use CMC MAG, as the normal Disc ID, at least in North America, has VERBAT-IM in it.

 

I've used that drive you're using a long time ago, and I do know it works on Verbatim BD-R when the Disc ID has VERBAT-IM in it.

[Tom7272]

Image of the disks used.

I specifically bought Verbatim, as reputable manufacturer, and looked out to avoid LTH disks.

The 'burned' disk has the telltale ring on it, but the drive happilly accepted it as 'blank' and burned the same thing again on it (taking another 20+ minutes), but disk was still empty. The attached log may be from that second attempt.

 

As a side note, I managed to "kill" the writer when updating firmware (because several google results claimed "update firmware to solve the burning issues with blu-ray, and LG is not very good with labelling their firmware or doing any safety checks). If you think its the disks, I'll have to try and unbrick the writer, then try another disk... wish me luck.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[dbminter]

In what part of the world are you?  I've never seen Verbatim BD-R packaging like that before.  I've heard of Verbatim DataLife Plus, but never DataLife.  Life Series DVD and CD are the CMC junk media, but DataLife Plus CD and DVD are the Mitsubishi MKM good stuff.

 

I think in certain parts of the world, Verbatim farms out their BD-R to CMC.  In North America, the Disc ID is VERBAT-IM.

 

Could you post an image of the label surface on top of one of these BD-R?

 

It could be the CMC discs.  I know with some CMC DVD+R, once burned, some DVD players do not recognize they're inserted.  So, that could have happened with your burned BD-R in your drive.  The drive isn't recognizing a CMC inserted burned disc.  You can tell by putting one of these BD-R you burned in a drive and in ImgBurn in either read or write modes, there's a line in the pane of information on the right that says something like Disc ID/DID or Manufacturer ID/MID.  If it says CMC, you burned a CMC.  If it says VERBAT-IM, you burned one of the higher quality discs.  Which means we'll have to dig deeper into the problem.  But, doing that will tell if you burned a CMC or VERBAT-IM BD-R as it seems you may be a bit uncertain as to which log you may have attached.

 

If you did brick the burner, you're probably better off just getting a new one.  I've never come across that situation, but I'd say it's relatively impossible to unbrick a device without sending it in to the manufacturer.  Even the, the manufacturer will just replace it because it's cheaper and easier.

 

LG firmware updaters are, generally, smart enough to know what device you've attached and if the firmware you're trying to flash is incompatible.  Unless you were using custom home brew firmware and were using an outside flasher.

[Tom7272]

Location is central europe.

The photo is taken from the manufacturer website and matches the box label I kept (product here https://www.verbatim.net.pl/pl/prod/bd-r-sl-datalife-25gb-6x-wide-inkjet-printable-25-pack-spindle-43811/)

The disks themselves have no markings, because they are inkjet-printable. There is faint number sequence on the underside, but mirrored and hard to read.

If ImgBurn identified it as CMC, thats probably what it is. Sucks to get cheated by manufacturer.

Might explain the inexplicable fails and why sometimes it worked and sometimes not - believe me, I tried like 5 diff programs and began to think some windows drivers are messed up.

 

I cannot verify the burned disk, because 1) the drive is dead as of now and 2) turned the disk into mug coaster, because its unusable.

 

Speaking of burner, I used the manufacturer provided firmware update download from the site, for this exact model. It did not complain about wrong model (in fact, if i download older firmware version meant for "previous" model, it screams that checksum check failed.). The updater correctly identified the drive as 1.03 and updated it to 1.05, but the program hung about 80% up, so after 10 mins of waiting I killed it. Since then, the drive tray opens, but no discs spin or read.  Manufacturer updater programs  refuse to downgrade the drive to 1.3, or reinstal 1.05 citing the newest firmware is already installed. From what I read in internet the new and awesome firmware is also encrypted and locked, so you cannot overwrite it with anything else.

There might be some hacky ways to restore the drive, but my forum digging has been wildly inconclusive so far. Enough to say, I am not buying anything from LG ever again.

 

Can you recommend any burners that would work with the low quality media I got? Don't really want to toss out the box of BD-R I paid 20$ for.

Although the only real choices locally are Pioneer BDR S12 LXT / DR-212DBK / BDR212EBK [can't really see whats the difference between them.]

[dbminter]

I've read on these forums that it does seem to matter in what part of the world you live in that determines who makes what.  So, I've heard a few times here that in Europe, Verbatim farms out to CMC for their BD-R.  So, there's really not much you can do about that.

 

Unfortunately, LG is the best of the worst.  Pioneer used to make a fine product, but no more.  I've been telling them of a firmware error in their drives for over 5 years now and they still haven't corrected it.  The last one I had, Pioneer had to refund my money because it died before 2 months after purchase.  ASUS is fine if you have no plans on burning DVD+R DL discs as it cannot properly write to those.  I told them, too, what the firmware problem was, but they refuse to address it, either.

 

The different model numbering schemes of Pioneers generally refer to the extra features they have.  For instance, the base model doesn't support XL media.  One model is probably an Ultra HD BD drive.

 

If you're going to give Pioneer a try, you may want to hold off for a bit.  There are rumors Pioneer is preparing the 213 line for release soon.  They've already ceased production, so it goes, on the 212 series and are just selling remaining stock now to clear out for the 213's.  I am waiting on the 213 to see if they've ever fixed the nagging firmware issue.

 

If you're interested in what I use, it's the LG WH16NS60.  The NS40 is cheaper, but it does not write properly to BD DL media.  While I'll never use the Ultra 4K Blu-Ray feature of the NS60 that makes it more expensive, it does properly write to BD-RE DL I've tested it with.

[dbminter]

One of the good things about LG is their very good replacement policy.  I have one that I need to return sometime this week.  I've been returning dead or faulty units for about 3 years now and I've never been charged a replacement fee.  Even though the out of warranty replacement fee is $50, and they've told me it would cost $50, they've never actually ever charged me for a replacement, even for out of warranty units.  Even if they did charge me, I'd pay for it as it's cheaper than buying a whole new unit.

[Tom7272]

I have reached out to LG explaining the issue with firmware and asking for assistance. Will see what they reply.

***

I don't really want to buy another LG because of bad experiences with the brand - the previous DVD burner was from LG, and died due to 'tracking error' - the only reason I bought a Blu-ray burner from them, was because it was the only model available locally at the time. They do acceptably good TV's tho.

Thanks for heads-up on the pioneer, but knowing local market, any new line of product will take around half year to come here or longer, and I really want to have operable burner this month for data archival, and, I suppose, verifying that old burned BD-R actually still hold their data.

My only choices at this moment, ruling out LG, are Pioneer drives, because Hitachi is made by LG, and Asus (BW-16D1HT) is probably also based on LG, so... not much choice.

The Asus puzzles me actually, being the priciest in store and having some kind of "Green" technology, which looks like a red flag for me - seriously, what kind of energy saving you can do with drive that uses almost no power when there is no disk spinning in it??

[dbminter]

The ASUS BW-16D1HT is a good enough BD model of choice so long as you don't need to burn DVD+R DL.  I stopped testing it when it failed on that media, but it was working on DVD+RW, DVD-R, and BD-R.  However, as I said, I never tested it beyond those 3 media types so I don't know what other gotchas may be present.  Although the jury was still out on DVD+RW, I think, because I seem to recall being uncertain if the skips in playback on testing were because of the ASUS drive.  I never got around to further detailed testing before the DVD+R DL failure was a deal killer.

[Tom7272]

I have not managed to revive my BH16NS40 - I did manage to flash it into WH16NS60, but it refuses to downgrade into BH16SN40 1.03 altogether.

I have ordered Pioneer BDR 212 DBK and will see how it fares. I mostly burn DVD and occasional DVD-DL, so issues with that are a deal killer for me. That, and I suspect said Asus to have LG parts inside, so avoiding it out of spite.

Thank you for help, and the topic is closed with result of "bad media" -> "bricked own burner" -> "new burner".

[dbminter]

It's odd you could cross flash a BH to a WH16NS60.  And downgrading makes sense as most firmware is locked down so you can't regress back to older packages without unauthorized third party utilities.  Pioneer drives have some such tools, but, as I said, they're not supported.

[Tom7272]

I used third party flash tool to downgrade to WH16NS60 1.01 firmware, but got stuck there, as any other flash attempts failed.

The new Pioneer BDR 212 DBK arrived, and I'm in the process of reading back my previously burned BD-Roms (the awful CMC MAG 5). Interestingly, first disk reported as empty, second one copied with some read errors at one of the files (but DID read after clicking retry), then tried again to read the first disk, and this time it reported full and read back without errors [/shrug].

I will try burning something on the discs I got, and if that proves unreliable, I'll have to hunt some reputable disks - any advice how to spot "good" BD-R for writing?

 

P.S. What is going on with the forum engine? I write something, click post, nothing appears in the thread. If I refresh page and try writing again, my previous post is 'restored' into edit window, and if I click post, only now it appears.

 

[dbminter]

Unfortunately, it's not really easy to discern the reputable discs from the non.  Plus, it varies based on where you are in the world.  For instance, in North America, Verbatim makes a quality BD-R, but it seems in Europe, they're using CMC.  You might have luck with a seller possibly on eBay who is in North America who is willing to send to Europe.  Of course, that's hardly cost effective.

 

I've not noticed any odd behavior with the forum today, so it must have been transient.