Odd/Frustrating 716A Problems

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

Ok, here’s the back-story.
I have a Plextor 716A that was working just fine in May of 2005 When I bought it.
Around June or July it started burning with data verification errors in Nero.
I contacted Plextor, and they replaced my drive.
The problem seemed to go away, but now it’s back.
I have an Asus Motherboard with an Nforce 2 chipset, (without the Asus IDE drivers installed)
I just updated my Motherboard Bios, Drivers (all but IDE), and Drive Firmware.

I don’t think the problem is Media related (but I’m no expert).
Here’s a couple of typical scans.
Keep in mind that both of these scans are from discs that are BAD (failed data verification) I can confirm that the data verification is working correctly, because I have seperately verified this via MD5 Sums of burned files.

#2

Although your scans are not the best I’ve seen both are acceptable and within the specifications (PIE below 280, PIF below 4). I see you’re also scanning at 12X and at this read speed the drive will pick up a lot more errors than at 2X, the speed that PlexTools uses. So, I don’t know what the cause of the verification error is but the discs should be perfectly readable.

#3

Considering a scan speed of 12x, those scans are good. Data verification errors occur probably because the data is damaged inside the IDE cable, inside your chipset or inside your RAM. You should run MemTest86+. If it finds errors, replace your RAM, if it doesn’t, try a better IDE cable or check if you have some weird settings in your BIOS

#4

Alex is right. Data corruption is seldom the burner’s fault. Check the rest of your system.
Keep in mind that the maximum allowed length for an IDE cable is 46cm. Longer cables are outside the specifications and might cause data corruption!

#5

OK, Thanks for the help. I thought that’s what was going on.
I’ve replaced the IDE cable and i’m going to do some more tests.
I ran memtest 86 a while back, but I’ll probably run it again.

#6

Are you using the Asus Cd-rom Ide cable? It is only 40 pin and will not allow UDMA4