Hi, It was me that started the thread about B7S9 dammaging my drive. Initially I thought it was not the firmware but nero but now after alot of troubleshooting i've come to the conclusion that it was the firmware. Seems like using .cvt file with the flasher to flash your BenQ isn't a good idea. What screwed up my drive was a combination of using .cvt files instead of the .exe and updating to B7S9 firmware. Now i'm running B7P9 with the latest version of nero 6603 and getting consistent good quality burns as before this whole episode. See, after getting my BenQ 1620 oem drive i followed the 3 step method of converting my drive to the retail version. So the last two firmware's i had flashed were B7L9 and then to B7P9 in that order using the .exe files from BenQ's site. And I was getting fabulous burns with all +r media and the error rates were specifically low towards the end of the dvd which was great. Then B7S9 came out and i gave that a try, and i noticed higher PI failures at towards the end of the discs with a couple of discs I had burned, I immediately switched backed to B7P9 but couldn't get the same results anymore. Then I rolled backed to version 6601 of nero but still i wasn't getting consistent burns. Now, when i had went back to B7P9 this time it was using the .cvt file and flasher. So, I tried using the original .exe file that i got from BenQ site and still i was getting bad results. In the end I tried this, I flashed the firmware back to B7L9 using original .exe restarted my computer burned a full dvd using nero cd-dvd speed, flashed to B7P9 using again the original .exe (original meaning not hacked one or rpc1) restarted my computer and started getting good consistent quality results again with very low error rates towards the end of the dvd, just like i was getting originally. The huge error spikes at the end of the dvd had dissapeared. And this time it was permanent. I have burned more then 20 dvds after this and gotten good consistent results and not a single coaster. So anyone who's getting big error spikes towards the end of the dvd can try this method. It worked for me. By the way, i'm using nero 6603 and there's no problems with it. I think the whole problem with the spikes towards the end of the dvd lay in flashing to B7S9 and using .cvt files.