716A Bad recordings, reason for RMA?

CD, DVD and (Ultra HD) Blu-ray Writers Plextor Writer
#1

Well, I have a Plextor 716A for over a year now…
Most recordings I do end up bad. I get no errors while the recording takes place, and supposedly “burn process completed successfully!” as Nero says…but the disk will be partly unreadable most of the time. For example I butn 12 video files and 2-5 of them will be unplayable…

If I make Nero verify the recording after it’s done, it will inform me of the obvious, that the disc has errors…

This has been happening since the time I bought the damn drive, and you might wonder why I didn’t bother asking until now…well, I didn’t use it much and with some Intenso discs I had bought back then it mostly worked. But now I bout 25 Samsung DVD+R discs that it mostly destroyed, and then another 25 Verbatim DVD-R that it is not able to write correct again, and I am pissed…

I sent an RMA request to Plextor, but I wanted to write here because you must have much more knowledge on these drives than me…

PS: Needless to say I got the last firmware 1.09 that changed nothing :frowning:

#2

If Verbatim doesn’t work I am quite sure your drive is deffective.

Give us some more info about your system too.

#3

We’d need some more info. What errors does Nero report? What MID are those DVDs (use Plextools, disk info)? etc. etc.

Meanwhile some things to try and consider:

Run the self test of the drive: http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=49767#general-defective
Check that Nero is not killing your video content (maybe create and burn same content with other software)
Check that nothing else is interfering with the burning-process (IDE drivers?)
Check the burns with Plextools Q-Check and post the results here

#4

Ditto HWP. Check the disc quality of the blank and recorded discs with PTP. If error rates are low, the problem may lie elsewhere. What is “partly unreadable”? Do the discs play in the recorder?

#5

“partly unreadable” means that I burn 12 video files and 7 of them play fine, the other 5 are unreadable…

It can’t be the media, I have tried lots of them including expensive ones like Verbatim and TDK.

The errors that I get in Nero are “read errors” when verifying the recording. It will start veryfying jsut fine, then at some point (lets say after 40% done) it will start to give continuous read errors…

I have noticed that on certain batches of media it burnes them fine. For example I had a batch of 10 Intenso DVD+R and it burned them just fine, then a batch of Jaga Optical, burned fine too…after some time I bought Intenso DVD+R again to test but this time with no success :frowning:

So I guess the drive could be just too picky, but other 716A I have seen in friends are not like that…and when you pay over double the price for a drive I think this is unacceptable.

#6

Not necessarily picky, though it seems that way. Media varies in quality a bunch…from lot to lot and even from disc to disc in the same lot. Use PTP and do a FE/TE check to see if the disc tracking (eccentricity) and focus (flatness) are up to snuff at the set speed. You may have to slow it down or the media may be crappy at any speed. On a burned disc, check jitter, beta, and PI/PO to check the written quality. If the results are poor, check a couple of different vendors in the same way. If all are crappy, the drive is going south. If one or two are good, stick with those. Media quality has deteriorated quite a bit in the last couple of years as price competition makes vendors cut corners. Check the other forums and you see the same thing for other drives.

#7

Well, I did some checking on the media ID, of media I have burned, here is the table :
BRAND MEDIA ID RESULT
SONY 8x +R SONYD11 1 try, successful
JAGA 8x +R MCC003 4 tries successful
Verbatim 8x +R MCC003 26 tries successful
Verbatim 8x -R CMCMAG.A 17 tries coasters
That’s 8x DVD-R TYG02 1 try successful
Intenso 4x DVD-R MCC002 8 tries successful
Intenso 16x +R OPTODISCR16 1 try coaster
Samsung 8x +R OPTODISCOR8 21 tries coasters
Ricoh 8x +R RICOHJPNR02 1 try successfull

So I guess the Plextor likes the MCC002/MCC003 medias?
Bad thing is, I got lots of those Verbatim -R left (33 pieces) and the samsungs (29 pieces) that were a total disaster…

I think I am gonna get some Taiyo Yuden +R that I can find cheap and test them.
Seeing the Media IDs I can understand that it must be the bad media responsible for the errors and not the recorder, but I can’t understand how can each and every one of them become faulty. I mean, the verbatim -Rs , and the samsung +Rs I tested, had 0% success in 40 pieces…what the hell…can it be so bad? It’s even in the Plextor compatibility list (ok not recommended, but listed as compatible to be recorded in default speed).

#8

My suggestion would be to place the extra jumper on the DMA pins (marked on the back of the drive). This is the same section as the MA/SL/CS pins, and is the set farthest to the left, if looking at it from the back. This seems to have solved all of my issues with unreadable disks.