Plextor PX-608CU & DVD-RAM (bad sectors on brand new discs)

Computer Hardware
#1

Hello, I just recently purchased a Plextor PX-608CU and since it’s my first drive capable of writing to DVD-RAM’s, I thought I would pick up a 5-pack to check them out. I got some Panasonic 2-3x DVD-RAM’s (my burner supports up to 5x), and (full) formatted them as FAT32 under Windows (after disabling Windows CD Recording on the drive). I do not have any DLA/InCD software installed, FYI.

Anyway, I copied a few small files and it worked just fine. I was pretty happy. However, then I wondered what would happen if I ran a chkdsk /r on one of these discs. I ended up with about 275+MB of bad sectors. I thought it might be a fluke, or that I wasn’t supposed to use chkdsk on the discs, so I reformatted the disc, and tried copying a large RAR file to the disc. Eventually I had a few write delay errors and it gave up. I decided to run chkdsk /r on the remaining 4 discs after (full) formatting them. Every disc had a couple hundred megabytes of bad spots.

My question is… is this normal behavior for DVD-RAM’s, or what? If so, I can tell why they don’t seem to be very popular anymore. :stuck_out_tongue:

Here’s what chkdsk logged:

C:\>chkdsk /r /v G:
The type of the file system is FAT32.
Volume BACKUP_001 created 8/12/2007 8:17 PM
Volume Serial Number is E248-D54C
Windows is verifying files and folders... 
0 percent completed.
\Documents and Settings2.part2.rar
99 percent completed.
100 percent completed.
File and folder verification is complete.
Windows is verifying free space...
Bad sectors found.ted .
Free space verification is complete.
Windows has made corrections to the file system.
    4,471,152 KB total disk space.
      125,456 KB in 1 files.
      801,136 KB in bad sectors.
    3,544,544 KB are available. 

       16,384 bytes in each allocation unit.
      279,447 total allocation units on disk.
      221,534 allocation units available on disk.
Cannot write boot sector.

I’m also not sure what’s up with this: “Bad sectors found.ted .” Is that a typo, or what?

Any ideas? Thanks!

#2

Update: I ran chkdsk several times on these DVD-RAM’s and every time it finds more bad sectors. I’m up to 666MB of bad sectors (go figure) on one disc.

Seems these DVD-RAM discs are junk. Anyone else ever have this problem?

#3

Hi

yeah had problems with this drive and bad sectors, but resolved it by leaving at least 10gb free space on my hard drive - seemed to be an issue. this with dvdr and dvddl though haven’t tried ram. Also found a restart right before burning helps, i think plextool chews up your cpu sometimes.

#4

Hey thanks for the reply. Well, I have 30GB of free space, and am only having issues with DVD-RAM discs. I’ve burned plenty of CD-R, CD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW, and a few DVD-R’s. All without problem. The only problem is with CD-RAM’s formatted as FAT32. They get bad spots and I get delayed write failures. Doesn’t happen any other time.

I also have no CD burning software installed whatsoever. I’m only using Windows CD Recording, and the native XP drivers for writing FAT32 to DVD-RAM discs. No Plextor or Roxio software.

#5

This is pretty typical behavior with a drive that’s burning RAM discs very badly. I’d stop using it for that unless the issues get resolved with a firmware update.
I’d also stop using FAT and Windows burning service, and install the Panasonic RAM driver.

In theory, every sector burned is checked/verified, and if it’s not readable the data is burned to the next sector. Works like a hard drive in other words. Another symptom of bad burn quality is that the burn takes much longer than it should, because the data is continually being re-burned.

If you want to check data integrity, simply copy the files back to HD. If there are no errors, it’s all good.