New burner, SHW-160P6S, will not read many old DVD-Rs

aIIm 2006-05-09 07:38:59 UTC #1

I just replaced my old dead burner, a Lite-On LDW-811S, With a new Lite-On SHW-160P6S. The new Lite-On performs remarkably well: dual-layer, burns reliably at 16x, etc, but it will not read many of the DVD-Rs burnt with the old Lite-On, particularly Verbatim media. The new burner tries to read these disks for ten or fifteen seconds, gives up and flashes its activity light three times in succession for three iterations. Any attempt to mount the disks results in "No Medium Found", and equivalent Windows error messages.

I have a lot of data backed up on these disks that my new burner doesn't like. Are there any tricks I can try to get my new burner to read them, even just once so I can make ISOs and archive the data again? My current firmware version is PS08; I've tried to hunt down PS09, but it seems to have disappeared from Lite-On's page.

Any feedback is appreciated. Thank you.

TimC 2006-05-09 07:44:29 UTC #2

Try this link to get the new firmware.

aIIm 2006-05-09 08:07:11 UTC #3

Thanks for the link. I am now at PS09, but drive is behaving identically. No joy. I suppose I am screwed, eh?

aIIm 2006-05-09 08:18:43 UTC #4

Just as a (possibly useless, except to somebody considering a dvd-r purchase in the near future) addendum, I made a more systematic test, and it is indeed the Verbatim media that chokes and pukes. The older Memorex disks work perfectly.