Making Frisbies for fun! Muchos DVD problems

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

Hi , its my first post here so i’ll try and make a good impression.

fisrtly i ll run through the spec of the machine and then i will elaborate on the problem at hand.

Macintosh powerPCG4 Dual 1.25ghz
768 sdram
80gb
running OSX 10.3.5 with all recent updates
Pioneer DVD - RW DVR - 107D (Recently bought and installed internally)
HL-DT-ST RW/DVD GCC-4480B (Factory installed unit)
I use Toast Titanium 6.07.

Basically I have two problems at the moment one with each drive.

  1. I recently bought the pioneer drive and installed it myself without a hitch. Got my first pack of DVD’s to use Intenso DVD-R which seemed to work fine although some did error which i beleive was down to my inexperience using mactheripper & dvd2onex. Used them up and bought some Bulpaq orange 4xDVD-R as i had alot of data to back up, (not for DVD movies) i read somewhere that these would be fine for my setup, alas all did not go well. When trying to burn using toast, at various speeds, i get the “sense key error” in one form or another and the disc fails to burn, tried using the finder, Burn Disc mode and this is also unsuccessful fails to burn disc. Now just got some Packard Bell DVD-R discs which work fine in toast. so this leads me to beleive that it is the Bulpaq orange discs at fault. What do you guys think? i am no expert. if it is the Discs can anyone reccomend a altenative brand(Cheapish) that will give me no problems or can u help me fix my drive/toast/system or whatever is causing the problem

  2. The factory installed drive (HL-DT-ST RW/DVD GCC-4480B) fails to read any DVD’s whatsoever, It has been like this for some time, once upon a time it did read DVD’s although somewhat erratically, and has rapidally degraded. The drive will still read and burn CD’s! I have liited knowledge regarding this area so any advice or help would be appreciated regarding this drive.

#2

Bulkpaq is some of the worst (hence “B-Grade”) media you can get. Cheap, (much) better quality alternatives: Ritek (various brands, depending on your location - typical ones: Ridata, Traxdata, Arita, Platinum (DVD-R), Prodisc (e.g. Intenso), CMC (e.g. Memorex).

#3

To throw a spanner in the works, some Bulkpaq media is actually quite good, e.g. those with ProdiscS03 and Fujifilm03 dyes. But yes, they also do some rubbish (e.g. VDSPMSAB001). I’ve also read that CMC isn’t great media.

The better online retailers will tell you the media code so you don’t have to guess - which is nice of them. :slight_smile: (Rambox.co.uk, SVP.co.uk, UKDVDR.co.uk all do).

A good bet is to go for 4x media which usually have a good price/performance ratio, e.g. Datawrite Grey 4x with ProdiscS03 at about 20p per disc from SVP.co.uk.

#4

thanks for the help guys, i take it that the sense key issue with toast etc is due to the pants media that im using, ill have to try some of the other discs that you have mentioned. Anyone have any ideas about my other drive, should i post that query some where else??

#5

Those symptoms sound like the drive is faulty, unfortunately.

#6

I had the pioneer 107 and it loved the 8x datawrite grey discs with the fujifilm 03 dye.
Almost as good as the ritek G05 discs, but a few pounds cheaper

#7

Many thanks for the help guys, I’m going to take it back to the shop as its under warantee still, so they should replace the drive. And i’ll try some of the suggested media!

#8

I bought bulkpaq 4x disk and im having no probs backing up my ps2 games.

Mind u, u always get what u pay for!

#9

So was the drive bad?

If not, it’s probably a combination of your disk permissions and your DVD media.

I only used Apple-branded DVD-R media for about a year, and after trying a few brands find that the Memorex DVD-R 50-packs are best bang for your buck. No coasters yet.