LiteOn 165H6S wont burn properly

[HellFire77]

Hi people.

This is my first post, but I have been hanging around for a while now. However I had a question. I recently bought a LiteOn 165H6S burner and loved it, but after just a month it died a horrible death, thing was so loud and was literally shaking my case I think it broke a gear or something. Anyway I got it replaced and the new one seemed ok till I ran a few scans of the DVDs, and found higher than normal PIE on my Sony DVD-Rs(SONY16D1). I thought maybe it just didn’t like the media, so I tried some Taiyo Yuden(TYG02) and was horrified by what I saw, I scanned the DVD in both the LiteOn and in my BenQ 1655, and got very bad results, worse than the Sony Media, as you can see from the pics I posted parts of the DVD are unreadable.
I am going to return it tomorrow and I might try another one, unless maybe there is another LiteOn burner that would be better? However, what can cause a brand new drive that seems to be just fine burn such good quality DVDs so poorly?

Chris

[nickyboy4]

That is a bad drive, I have the same drive and it loves TYG02, they burn great at 12X. Maybe the 3rd one will be the charm.
By the way, if you want to try a different one I also have a 1635S and I get better burns with it even though it is a 5 rather then a 6 generation liteon.

[BeardedKirklander]

Perhaps you may have a Power Quality issue?

I have had that happen with an HP drive when I had a small non-name power supply. I have been building my own machines and have gotten better ones - An Enermax 460 in my current machine - plus I added a good UPS with AVR (both boost and trim) and the nice clean power seems to have helped ensure much higher quality burns on all my drives. The Lite-On 165H6S burner has been great for me so far.

Given the fact that more than one drive has tanked, perhaps you may want to try using a different power connector (an isolated one if you happen to have one available in your machine) and perhaps even a new IDE cable (80 conductor, 40 pin) first.

If that does not work well, you may want to look into a power supply with clean, consistent power, and maybe even a UPS.

I do know back in the days before I started using UPS’s with AVR, I would have hard drives go bad every now and then. But since I have been using the UPS’s with AVR, I don’t think I’ve lost a single one.

Just for comparison, perhaps getting some Verbatim media for testing might be worth trying as well?

Good luck.

[HellFire77]

Hi guys, thanks for the quick reply. I know that most drives love TYG02, so I was very surprised by the results. I cant get a 5th gen drive, the place I buy from only has the 6S ones.

As for the power supply I have an Enermax 485watt PSU with dual 12 volt rails. I have the BenQ 1655 drive as master and the LiteOn as slave. Before that I had a Pioneer 109 in the LiteOns spot. The BenQ still does nice burns, and the first LiteOn before was good.
I do have a UPS, but I don’t think it does AVR(Automatic Voltage Regulation).
But don’t think it was the PSU, seeing as something physically broke in the drive last time.
I was going to buy a 100pack of verbatim from Future Shop last week when they were on sale, but the sale ended sooner than I thought.

Another strange thing I noticed, was my first LiteOn had the HS0D FW but the new one had the HS0E, and when I burned DVDs NeroCDSpeed says it was burned with a Sony DW-G121AHS0E.
Now I know Sony’s are rebadged LiteOns, but why does this one say it. So I flashed the Second LiteOn back to the HS0D. The Sony part went away, but the burns were still bad. So I flashed it back to the HS0E FW, and the Sony name came back and the burns are still bad. Sigh… time for a new drive it seems.
I am going to go in there tomorrow and get a new one, I will be sure to post the results on the “Third Times a Charm” Drive.

Chris

[BeardedKirklander]

One thing perhaps to try - going into to the Device Manager and deleting all your IDE devices, then all of your IDE Controller entries, then letting Windows XP re-discover / re-initialize all the hardware after a reboot.

Sometimes that helps. Even after that, sometimes re-installling your motherboard chipset drivers after that may also work wonders.

Have you tried running Nero InfoTool and checking under the configuration tab to make sure all the DMA’s are on and such.

I assume you did check the cable and all so it is an 80 conductor 40 pin and all?

Hope the next drive works well for ya.

[HellFire77]

Well just a small update, I went and got another drive, 3rd one this time. So far it seems to be working just fine, so I guess 3rd time’s a charm I posted a pic of the TYG02, still not a great scan, but much better than before. Also it seems much better at burning the Sony media as well.
Anyway Thanks for all the help guys.

Chris