ND3520, -R got even worse with 3.07 firmware?

CD, DVD and (Ultra HD) Blu-ray Writers NEC / Optiarc Writer
#1

Has anyone noticed problems on the ND3520 with minus R media since changing to the latest firmware? See images below; two on 3.06 written at x4 I think, two on 3.07 written at x4 and x2 (all 4 discs from the same spindle, I stopped the scan of the bad one in the middle because it was pointless to continue).

Either that, or the drive mysteriously decided it stopped liking -R during the 2 months between the writes. I find it hard to believe it’s the media to blame, judging from the error pattern and the fact it’s the very same spindle.

Also, is this NEC drive (and close models) bad in general when it comes to writing (or reading or both) -R media? The “good” scans below are what I get with -R media (which I generally don’t use), which is quite out-of-spec.

image 1 (won’t inline…):

#2

Update: I decided to downgrade back to 3.06 and see what’s up. Apparently, it’s not the firmware. See scan below. Again, very similar error increase pattern.

So, any idea what’s wrong? I still find it hard to believe it’s the media to blame. I think the drive’s the cause. What do you reckon?

shae_20061219_MCC03RG20_x4.png645×523 19.8 KB

#3

Try scanning at 5x and 12x

#4

I always scanned at x8 and results were consistent with readability. These recent -Rs aren’t readable (except the beginning). Plus, with SUCH amounts of errors, some variance would be insignificant.

Anyway, here’s x12. x5 will take some time… :slight_smile:

shae_20061219_MCC03RG20_x4_scan12.png645×523 17.7 KB

#5

(Hmm… editing disabled after some time?)

And here’s at x5. Interesting how PIF increases faster at first, then drops, but overall, same thing.

(And why o why even x5 is CAV? NEC and their strange ideas…)

shae_20061219_MCC03RG20_x4_scan5.png645×523 17.1 KB

#6

Can you make a tranfer rate test? are those mcc fake?
My 3520 still burns -r media very nice(not perfect), of course i only used TY media.

#7

I tried reading a file on one of these discs and the drive grinded to a halt.

I think these Verbatims came from Office Depot, so I assume their supply chain is trusty. Anyhow, now I’m getting trouble with +Rs too, not as bad as the above, but still unacceptable. It appears the drive’s gone bad…

#8

I’m having some anoying problems with my 3520a ,similar to problems that some other people have with their 3550…
It burns just fine -there is no problems with that, but however it has problems with reading dvds that it just burned a few moments ago…I tryed reinstalling XP, restoring to systems previous date that was before the begining of the problems,cleaned the registry, uninstalling then reinstalling my NEC,and I don’t know what can I do more!?!
It can’t read the DVD that I just copied to another disk-(when you go to my computer/E/my disk) it reads it like DVD-RW, but I can play that DVD using Power DVD (if its a muvie) …maybe I could live with that,but if anything else is on the disk there is no way I can explore that dvd…
PLEASE HELP if you know how!?!?!?
THANK YOU