Please Help: LH-20A1L - Two drives suddenly will not burn DL Discs

captain_tinker

This thread is about the Lite-On DVD RECORDER DVD+-R RW. Click here to see full specs

Folks,
Ok, I am really stumped. I've spent several days of racking my brain, and even reformatting and re-installing my computer about 8 times in 3 days trying to fix this, and using two identical drives, and the problem remains the same. Let me explain.

I have the Lite-On LH-20A1L. I have heard that Lite-On is supposed to be a very good brand, or at least that a lot of other brands use it under the hood. That said, I have this drive in my machine at home, and have another one at work. My home machine was having some issues that I won't go too far into, but required me to re-install the OS. I had Vista Ultimate x64 SP1, I re-installed to Vista Ultimate x64 SP2. I reinstalled all programs, and drivers and then burned a home movie DVD+R DL and a lightscribed label on it. I went to burn a second copy of it, and the drive would not recognize the disc. I am using Verbatim DVD+R DL Lightscribe discs from Newegg. Again, I had heard that these were supposed to be one of the better brands to get, so I rely on those exclusively. I would put the disc in, and it would spin for several minutes, and then Nero 7 would say that the disc is a non-writeable CD-ROM! I popped in a DVD+RW and it recognized it right away. So I put the DL disc in, and it showed as CD-ROM. I put about 8 discs in, thinking maybe it was a bad disc or two, but they all did it.

So after re-formatting my machine at least 4 more times, and on time, I even tried Windows 7 RC x64, and it did the exact same thing, I went back to Vista, and still same problem. I went to work, and pulled the other drive, and brought it home, and popped it in, and the very same result!!! So I pulled out my old IDE dual layer burner from LG, and installed it, and it worked fine! Granted, no lightscribe, but it worked. So it's not my machine, it's not the media, but how can it be two physically separate drives that is the problem? I have not messed with the firmware on the one at work, it was at BL05 I believe, but I had messed with the firmware on the one at home, and I had brought it from BL01 to BL06 recently, and it had been working like that for several writes. Thats what I don't understand.

What could be wrong? Am I overlooking something? Is there a possible driver issue maybe?

-capT

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captain_tinker

Ok, here is an update. I think the two drives are junk. I put one of the drives in another computer, this time using Windows XP, and it gave me the same exact problem.

So I guess that means a hardware error. I'm just surprised that two physically different drives, even though they are the same brand and model, would fail at exactly the same time, with exactly the same problem.

Is this normal for drives to do this? Or is it just Lite-On? I thought I'd heard that Lite-on was supposed to be a good brand to buy?

__________________
I haven't lost my mind; I have a tape back-up somewhere. ~Author Unknown
Back up my hard drive? How do I put it in reverse? ~Author Unknown

Tacquett

I have the exact same Lite-on Drives two on my XP Home computer and dealing with the exact same issues.
I've had these drives installed for 1.5 years and a month ago they don't recognise most DVD Disc's
I've spent sever hours looking for a fix only to be redirected to driver programs to purchase.
I'll not be buying Lite-On again.
Good luck in finding a fix.

_chef_

Nothing stays forever....

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getit29

As chef said ("Nothing stays forever.... ") if you got 1.5 years out the your burners then you done good.
I go through burners a lot faster than that and it doesn't make any difference what the brand is they only
last for so long of a time.

You have to think of the read / write lasers in your burner like you would a light bulb in your home do you
have any light bulbs that have or will last forever? The are like anything else electrical they will and do burn
out after so long of a time no matter what the brand is so its not just a Liteon thing.