CD Freaks presents: Sony DRU-840A Burner review

Well just burned another dvd and Ashampoo said at the end (Avg write speed 14246 KB/s or 10.3x but the burning itself only took 6 minutes total which is great.Hopefully that is a sign of things to come even know i have burned about 10 others and this is the first that finished that fast.

Sorry for all the post's in a row but i can't find the damn edit button for the life of me.

what is the brand of media you are using and the MID code please; you will find that information when using Nero CDSpeed for the burn and the quality scan.

Have you insured that you are using the latest firmware for the drive also.

You only have 30 minutes to edit here.

Insert a blank disc in the drive, run CD-DVD Speed [found at www.cdspeed2000.com], select the "Create Data Disc" tab, and click start. This will waste a disc. Wehn the process finishes, please post a screenshot.

Ok will do!

Well this definitely illustrates what I have been talking about.Also just to let you guys know earlier I installed the FB/FR patch for my drive.



Thanks again guys for the help i really do appreciate it.

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Last edited by deucedeuce1; 15-07-2008 at 18:08.

It's hard to tell directly, but I think your slowdown problem is media related. Insert the disc you just wrote. [If you've already trashed it, you will have to make another one. But be sure to switch to the Create Disc tab first this time. ] After inserting the disc, in CD-DVD Speed, click on the disc quality tab, make sure you select 8x speed [you'll see the speed selection on the right part of the window], and hit start. When that finishes, post a capture of the CD-DVD Speed window. BTW, to capture the window, you can click the little floppy disc next to the start button.

Ok so heres the new one you asked me to get the small screen that popped up in front of the graph said this and by the way the media i used for this is HP 16x but i also have used sony16x with same results both were dvd+r

General Information
Drive SONY DVD RW DRU-840A
Firmware SS01
Disc DVD+R (CMC MAG M01)
Selected speed 8 X
Recorder information
Drive SONY DVD RW DRU-840A
Firmware SS01
Write speed 4 X
PI errors
Maximum 96
Average 18.47
Total 331034
PI failures
Maximum 4
Average 0.02
Total 3415
PO failures na
Jitter na
Scanning Statistics
Elapsed time 955
Number of samples 134080
Average scanning interval 1.07 ECC
Glitches removed 0


And here is the Graph.Thanks again.

It looks like your drive doesn't like writing at 16x, even though the media *appears* to be fine.

Can the drive read discs at full speed? [With this same disc inserted, and in the Benchmark tab, select Run Test>Transfer Rate.] The drive should reach 16x max read speed.

I'd try writing at 12x and see if that worked. If not, try 8x. If that still doesn't work, I'd return the drive [if possible].

Well here is that test.One good thing about all this is that I am learning how to use this program.When i was browsing this site and seeing those screenshots it had me wondering if i would ever figure out what the heck to do lol.Here is the benchmark.Also should i try out a SONY DVD starting with the first test and see how that goes Just to make sure it's not the media?

Hmm....what are your system specifications?

Also, what is the burst rate of your drive?[with an already-written disc inserted, select Run Test>Burst Rate].

Burst Rate is 42 MB/s.

I have a dell xps 400 with a 3.2 ghz pentium 4 dual core processor
4 gigs ddr2 533 (PC2 4200) ram
2 320 gig sata harddrives
evga-GeForce 7900GS KO 256MB

am i missing anything you need from there?

Also the current transfer mode on the sony burner is Ultra DMA Mode 4.

Hmm...well, I would just try a replacement drive, if possible. My DRU-840A almost never drops in write speed unless there is a buffer underrun [or the media is just bad]. And it reads virtually everything at max speed.

So your best opinion is that the drive is defective?Just want to be sure.

I personally would jump to that conclusion at this point in time. A simple return for another drive should work better.

Before you do that, though, see if you can get some Verbatim media and if it happens on that, too. If it does, then get a replacement for the drive and try again.

I'm going to do that first test again with the Sony DVD+R that i have and see if that works any better.You would think sony dvd recorder should work good with sony dvd and if not something is wrong.Thanks again for all your help.

Does this look better?I ran the test twice with the sony disc's to be sure and they both came out like this.

There is nothing wrong with the last burn.

Awesome i guess it may be just the cheap HP dvd's then.Thanks.

Poor media strikes again. At least you know what to look for now.

I still suggest writing at 12x max for that media.

Ok thanks dude and sorry for wasting your time all day.I really thought that i had tried the sony discs already but obviously i didn't.

I bought the above mentioned DVD burner some time ago,in the past i used it was able to both write DVD R and read them,but now when i insert a new DVD+R in the DVD rom it won't recognize them,however it does still read previously written DVD's and those bought.I use Nero 7 as the burning software.
The dvd burner is still able to burn CD R

Only thing i can think is that it doesn't like the brand of dvd.but i don't know shit lol.

Anyone know the difference between this drive and the DRU-842A ?

My 840A broke so i went to wal-mart and had to by the 842a i can see no difference at all.

(It broke because i forgot it was open and when i sat down my knee hit the tray and snapped it)

Ouch, Fortunately DVD burners are cheap these days. I just checkd the price on the 840A and its going for R348 which is not bad. My 830A is still going strong but my 720A is acting up abit, had two coasters last week for the 1st time and the drive almost always seems to jam the disc when opened.