This will probably be a long post, but it is the result of testing for almost two weeks. I’ll try to make it as concise as possible.
Preface: I had a Litey 20A3P (Alpha) and BenQ Dw1625 installed internally. Recently purchased 2 enclosures with NEC chipsets. Moved the aforementioned drives to the enclosures and installed a new 20A3P (Beta) and Pioneer 115D as internal drives. Keep in mind that I have rotated all the drives from external to internal during testing.
Problem: Burns with the 115D internally and externally went fine. The new 20A3P also did well. Then Benq never burned all that well but has never been a problem. The OLD 20A3P started to give be issues about 3 weeks ago with odd spikes. When I ran the QS after burning with the 115D, the BenQ, and new 20A3P the scans were ok. I never noticed any odd spikes, which is what I was looking for. When I ran a scan through the OLD 20A3P I noticed a very large spike. I know the QS isn’t most reliable, but helps me find large spikes. I probably burned 20 DVD’s from 5 different spindles (from different sections within the spindle) during this testing. All spindles are Verbs new and classic. But every burn turned out the same with that large spike right after 0.0. The kicker is that if I ran a QS on any drive (minus the 115D) BEFORE I ran it through the OLD 20A3P there was NO spike, If I ran a QS through the OLD 20A3P first, I would that large spike on EVERY scan.
I’ve corrected everything I could before I came to the conclusion that the old 20A3P was bad. The drive was purchased in 08/07. I changed out the PSU, the 80 pin IDE cable, ran Prime95 for the heck of it, burned the image from a different drive, changed firmware, burned different media from different spindles, reinstalled Imgburn, removed old lower filter, rotated the drives, and a few I can’t remember. But in the end, I realized it had to be the older 20A3P.
SCANS: This was burned with the OLD 20A3P at 8X
1st scan is with the new 20A3P internal drive. The spikes are normal for the old 20A3P and this media. This aren't the spikes I'm focusing on.
2nd scan is with the external BenQ. If you look carefully the spikes are in the same areas
3rd scan is the TRT by the new 20A3P