External Pioneer DVR-112D problems

[JessW]

Hi there,

Just wanted to know if anyone could help me out here, i'm having a bit of trouble installing my pioneer dvr-112d. Firstly, I am installing it externally as I have a laptop. Secondly, I am such a tight arse I did not buy an external case, instead i pulled apart an external Imation burner that i had before and put the Pioneer in there.

At first, i thought it worked, because the computer recognised the drive. But then, whenever i try to burn anything, the pioneer makes plenty of noise but nothing happens, and then whatever application i'm using stops responding. All the plugs seemed to be the same in the back of my external case to plug into the drive so i don't see what is wrong exactly. It's IDE and so was the external burner, i didn't think i needed to worry about master and slave because it's external.

So is it not possible to put a burner in another burner's case, or have i just got a faulty burner?

Any suggestions on this would be really helpful, thankyou.
:iagree::iagree::iagree:

[Arachne]

Welcome to the forum

Not sure about using the casing from another burner, perhaps another forum member can advise there - but when I put any drive into my Belkin enclosure, I always jumper the drive to Master.

Try that and see how you go. Could be that you may have to spring for a new enclosure.

As for testing whther the drive is faulty or not, the only way you’re going to tell that (in the absence of another enclosure) is to find a friend who’ll maybe install it internally in their PC for you to test.

[zebadee]

Hi
Welcome onboard JessW.
1st although generally it doesn’t matter, as Arachne has suggested have the Jumper set to Master.
Pioneer usually have this as default.
As far as using another ‘enclosure’, when custom built.
It is possible that the Pioneer is too demanding for this setup.
Try uninstalling USB drivers & load the latest MS ones.
If no go, you’ll need if possible (again like Arachne suggests) to test the Pioneer internally. To totally rule out the drive.
If you’re successful doing this, that would leave the ‘enclosure’ as being the problem.

[JessW]

the only thing is really whether or not the drive is faulty, I’d rather just by an external one in one package then buy an external case and find it was the drive, because then I have a case and nothing to do with it. I suppose testing the drive really is the key, but so difficult to do for a noob like me. In your honest opinion, if you had to choose, given the symptoms the pioneer is showing, do you think it is more likely that the drive is faulty or that the external setup is wrong?

[zebadee]

Hi
In my experience I have found Pioneer to be exceptional on consistancy of quality with their drives.
That said, there’s always a first time.
In my previous post I have said what to do in an ideal world.
If this is not possible for whatever reason.
Then for peace of mind.
Returning the Pioneer & getting a custom job.
Maybe the best alternative.

[Cressida]

Hi JessW,

I agree that the probability of your new drive being bad is very low. You’re more than likely facing a hardware compatibility problem between the burner and the enclosure. Pioneers are kind of difficult in this respect. Other than being set as Master, they also require a so-called 80-wire IDE ribbon cable and UDMA4 transfer mode to operate properly. Your older enclosure may still have a 40-wire ribbon, so that’s worth a check, even if UDMA doesn’t apply to USB connections. And even if that’s OK, the drive may still not like the IDE-to-USB bridge-chip used in the enclosure. In my own experience, the most compatible burners in this respect are Lite-On, so if an exchange of the Pioneer is an option for you, I think you’d have a very good chance to get it to work yet with a Lite-On (the old Imation drive in the enclosure may even have been an OEM Lite-On?). Of course, you can also go for an external drive completely and not worry about anything else.

[JessW]

Just wanted to thank everyone for their responses, they have all been incredibly helpful.

thanks again,
JessW.

[chef]

Were the problem solved?

[JessW]

I’m going to test the drive with a proper external casing tomorrow, I’ll let you guys know the result.

[Cressida]

[QUOTE=JessW;2025597]I’m going to test the drive with a proper external casing tomorrow, I’ll let you guys know the result.[/QUOTE]

What’s a “proper” external casing, JessW? Unless you know it has a suitable chipset that can handle the Pioneer, it’ll be purely a matter of luck for it to work.

Here’s what my Pioneer 111D does in two different but “proper” 5.25" USB enclosures, which work perfectly with Lite-On burners. I canceled the second test after a couple minutes, cause it would have taken almost 2 hours to burn the DVD. Not a usable result in either instance, as you can see.