I’ve been burning discovery discs in ImgBurn trying to find the best speeds for a few types of DVD media I have. The burns have been less than stellar with my 3-year old CompUSA BenQ DW1655 (upgraded to BCIB) but they’ve been acceptable most of the time. A couple of days ago, I started getting I/O errors repeatedly at either the 50% point or right at the end of a burn. Some on burns as slow as 2x. I also started seeing more PIE and PIF on media that burned better than that previously. Last night, I got several Power Calibration Area Is Full messages and the burns wouldn’t even start. I cleaned the drive and some threads pointed me to check the IMAPI service in Windows (up to date XP Home, SP2) which was stopped. I restarted it and rebooted before I started getting Unrecoverable Read Errors during the verify process in ImgBurn. I finally tried a 16x Taiyo Yuden (TYG03) disc that burned very well a few days ago. Same read errors at first and eventually got a complete but very poor burn at 8x. Significant PIE and PIF in the first 250MB. Given the sudden string of error messages on three different media, I suspect my burner is toast. Does anyone have any other suggestions before I trash this drive? If I must replace it, what’s a good choice? I don’t use the LightScribe feature often, but I like having it available, not to mention the 50 or so LightScribe discs I have. I’d also like something that will support most of the DVD Speed tests. At the moment, I’m trying to use the following media:
CMC MAG M01 (Imation 16x SL +R with matte AquaGuard hub printable surface)
RICOHJPN D01-67 (Moser Baer 8x DL +R with glossy AquaShield hub printable surface)
TYG03 (Taiyo Yuden 16x SL -R with matte WaterShield hub printable surface)
I haven’t retried the 8x Optical Quantum TTH02’s that gave me the best burns at 16X a week ago but I’m tired of wasting discs on what appears to be a failing drive.
I really wasn’t planning to investigate a new burner in the middle of testing media, but it’s evidently not my option. I’d prefer to find something that might be available locally at Best Buy or Circuit City (or ???) so I can get through this replacement process quickly.
I expect the first recommendations will be buy better media, but the lesser media burned fine until a couple of days ago and even TY won’t burn well anymore.
I really need some recommendations here.
Thanks.
Ray