BenQ DVD Burner can't read scratched discs :-(

jsengupta · 29-09-2006

I bought a BenQ DW1640 Dual layer DVD burner towards the begining of this year. It is pretty good in terms of writing but when it comes to reading scratched DVDs it is really giving me a hard time. I have many movie DVDs which are scratched. To my surprise they run perfectly when I play them in my friend's laptop. I have tried on both HP and Dell laptop.

Is it a problem with my drive or the software I am using to play the DVDs? I have WMP 11 and Nero Showtime and both shows "Can not read part of DVD while playback is going on". I am planning to buy a DVD-ROM drive as I already have a burner. It would be of great help if someone can suggest me which DVD-ROM drive would be good to read scratched DVDs. Also I would like to know if there is something special about the DVD drives in laptops?

Thanks in advance
Joy.

*stroppy* · 29-09-2006

There's nothing special about laptop drives except that many have extra physical impact and shake buffering built into them. As far as your drive goes, you may have struck a finicky unit. Try cleaning the lens with a drive cleaning disk. As far as your scratched disks are concerned perhaps a commercial repair kit might help, or read this:
http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=194153

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**Arachne** · 29-09-2006

Your friend might have a more "tolerant" drive in his laptop. I know occasionally, people have been lucky enough to get LiteOn drives in their laptops (although most of the time it's QSI or Matshita, I think) - your friend may be one of those lucky ones.

The BenQ isn't a terrific reader, I don't think - although it's fast with "good" discs.

As for buying a second drive, I'd recommend another burner, but even if you do go for a DVD-ROM as planned, LiteOn are excellent readers of damaged or scratched discs IMO, so you might like to look around for one of those

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jsengupta · 30-09-2006

Thanks for all the suggestions. I am actually new in this fields so don't know about the firmware version in my drive.

I had already gone through the thread of how to repair scratched CD before posting my query. Problem is I stay in India so it is very difficult for me to get one of those repair kits as they are not commercially available here and if I get it shipped from US it will be very costly for me.

*TCAS* · 30-09-2006

Then how much is it cost in case you have to buy a new CD-ROM or DVD-RW?, may be you would be better off to buy new drive rather than repair kit.

jsengupta · 30-09-2006

A new drive if its a ROM then for Liteon it would be around 970 INR i.e. $20 apprx, whereas if I buy a repair kit from US then including shipping it will come around $40 or so. And most of the online stores don't ship in India. :-(

*TCAS* · 30-09-2006

Then your choice is definitely to buy brand new CD-ROM or DVD-ROM no doubt is more beneficial.

BenQ DVD Burner can't read scratched discs :-(

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