SH-S203N vs. RITEK-S04-66

CD, DVD and (Ultra HD) Blu-ray Writers Samsung / Toshiba / TSST Writer
#1

Hi guys,

Just bought an SH-S203N from NE and it’s causing me some headaches. I have been burning images to DVD+R DL discs and although the burn is completed successfully the drive won’t recognize the disc after that. The media I’ve been using is RITEK-S04-66 and yes, I am aware that this is not high quality media :slight_smile: The weird thing is that my old drive, a BenQ BQR-DW1670(B) can read these discs fine. If I burned the same type of disc with the BenQ at 2.4X and the Samsung reads that just fine.

Because I wanted to rule out the SATA chipset issues I connected the drives to USB ports through converters, but that made no difference. I have the latest firmware (SB01) and I’m using ImgBurn. ImgBurn will not burn at 2.4X when I set it to that but will use 4X instead. The result is the same when I burn at 4X and at 8X.

I know everyone is going to suggest different media, but I feel that if an error occurred during the writing it should either not be readable on the other drive as well or at least reported an error during the write.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

#2

Hi and Welcome![quote=newgringo;2026948]

Just bought an SH-S203N from NE and it’s causing me some headaches. I have been burning images to DVD+R DL discs and although the burn is completed successfully the drive won’t recognize the disc after that. The media I’ve been using is and yes, I am aware that this is not high quality media :slight_smile: [/quote]Ok.

The weird thing is that my old drive, a BenQ BQR-DW1670(B) can read these discs fine. If I burned the same type of disc with the BenQ at 2.4X and the Samsung reads that just fine.
Similar happens quite often with poor media and certain drives.

I know everyone is going to suggest different media, but I feel that if an error occurred during the writing it should either not be readable on the other drive as well or at least reported an error during the write.
I have had similar issues with another drive and other media. The disc was unreadable by the burning drive, but could be read without problems in other drives. There was no indication that something went wrong.

So you can’t do anything about that apart from using these discs in your other drive and feed your Samsung with good qualty media, that is Verbatim for DL.

Michael

EDIT: Posts moved from “203N scans” thread

#3

Thanks for the welcome and the quick reaction :slight_smile: Much appreciated.

One question about your comments. When you said “Similar happens quite often with poor media and certain drives.” did you mean that there might be a problem with my drive (in other words RMA it) or that it might be an issue with the SH-S203N in general with this media?

I searched the forum but could not find any references of people trying the RITEK-S04-66 with this drive.

#4

Hi,[quote=newgringo;2027000]Thanks for the welcome and the quick reaction :slight_smile: Much appreciated.[/quote]You’re Welcome :slight_smile:

One question about your comments. When you said “Similar happens quite often with poor media and certain drives.” did you mean that there might be a problem with my drive (in other words RMA it) or that it might be an issue with the SH-S203N in general with this media?
I had this issue with a Philips DVDR-1660P and Philips branded INFOME R30 (DVD+R). So this is not an issue of your Samsung drive, but such can happen with any drive and "the wrong"media. No reason for a RMA.

I searched the forum but could not find any references of people trying the RITEK-S04-66 with this drive.
There is a thread about the 203B and DL: http://club.cdfreaks.com/f105/sh-s203b-dual-layer-only-scans-discussions-230284/
This might be of interest for you since the 203B is basically the same hardware (apart from Lightscribe) as the 203N.

Michael

#5

Okay, that’s good to know. I wasn’t really looking forward to packing it up and shipping it out again :wink:

I did read the thread about S203B and Dual Layer, but in yet another thread there wa a discussion about whether the S203B and the S203N had similar hardware or not. Several people said that there were differences in hardware so I decided to err on the side of caution and not assume that experiences with the S203B would carry over to the S203N. Considering beef barley managed to do several decent scans (to the untrained eye) with the S203B and RITEK-S04-66 media it seems there might indeed be a difference between the drives.

Do you have any idea whether an issue like this can be solved through firmware?

#6

[QUOTE=newgringo;2027068]… I did read the thread about S203B and Dual Layer, but in yet another thread there wa a discussion about whether the S203B and the S203N had similar hardware or not. Several people said that there were differences in hardware… [/QUOTE]The only hardware difference you’ll find is the additional hardware for LightScribe (in “N” drives). [QUOTE=newgringo;2027068]Considering beef barley managed to do several decent scans (to the untrained eye) with the S203B and RITEK-S04-66 media it seems there might indeed be a difference between the drives.[/QUOTE]You’ll find 1 mil differences in 1 mil drives. Not to forget there are quite many differences in manufacturers [quality] of shipped S04 media.

To sum it up, what works for me doesn’t necessarily need to work for you. That’s the fun with all this we play around with here at cdfreaks. :smiley:

#7

Fair enough :slight_smile:

Of course we’re all still trying to find some common ground so that we can reasonably predict what will work and what won’t. Considering all the rave reviews the S203N got on NE it was a bit disapointing to find that my old drive was doing a better job than the new one (with this media anyway). I’m still hoping a firmware update will improve the situation, but maybe that just shows how much of a noob I am on this forum :wink:

#8

What drive did in your opinion handle that crap RiTEK-S04 in a better way?.. :slight_smile:

Ofcourse we all strive in same direction here at cdfreaks, no doubts about that.
But please don’t blaim the S203N drive for being a bad burner with this specific media, because not that many MediaTEK drives can handle this media anyway*.

*I’ve been here for a while and I still remember times back when MediaTEK drives were unable to burn any dash media successfully. Basically, the situation is tha same nowdays, If you intend to burn a lot of DVD-R’s get a Pioneer.

#9

The BenQ BQR-DW1670(B) drive that I was replacing (and is now staying put as a secondary drive ;)) has no problem writing to the RITEK-S04-66 discs nor reading them even when the Samsung has burned them and refuses to read them.

I’m not blaming the drive, just trying to understand what the problem is and figuring out how to fix it. I guess I’ve been lucky in the past with my burners. The cheap lite-on drives I had a couple of years ago were amazing at reading and writing everything I could throw at them. I don’t burn very much and I usually don’t pay much attention to the brand of media I buy (cheaper is better ;)). In other words I have probably just been very lucky.

It’s interesting to find out how finicky this whole business gets around DL media.

#10

Oh, I did forget to add some of information there. The BenQ can only burn DL at 2.4X and the media is specified to burn at 4X, 6X and 8X. So the Samsung will not go lower than 4X and the BenQ can only burn at 2.4X. Is there a way to force the Samsung to do 2.4X in this case?

#11

Why do you want to burn slower than 4x? high speed media burned slower may produce worse results.
Usualy 4 to 6x is the sweet spot.

#12

Because the disc burned at 2.4X by the BenQ was readable in both the BenQ and the Samsung. I must admit I don’t know how things have changed but a couple of years ago the rule was that the slower the burn the safer the result. Boy, do I feel old saying that :slight_smile:

#13

[QUOTE=newgringo;2027576]Because the disc burned at 2.4X by the BenQ was readable in both the BenQ and the Samsung. I must admit I don’t know how things have changed but a couple of years ago the rule was that the slower the burn the safer the result. Boy, do I feel old saying that :)[/QUOTE]

That rule isn’t true, burn a 16x sl media @ 2.4x or even 4x and then burn @8x or 12x, the results @ 2.4x will be abysmal, and very mediocre @ 4x.

#14

newgringo, I’ve burned that media on the 203N and it burned just as good as my 112L drive. Second layer was a little noisey, but nothing terrible, PIF’s were quite good. If you use MCSE you can see that the 203N doesn’t have a writing strategy to burn that media at 2.4x, for whatever reason samsung didn’t include it.

Sure it could be your drive that might not be calibrated well, just as it could be a not so great batch of blank discs. RMA it if you want.

#15

Thanks Eric, that is very useful info. Although I’m still not sure what to do now :wink: I think the Samsung burns the discs just fine but is off in reading them. I can’t even tell how well it burned them since the drive won’t even recognize them after they’ve been burned. If the calibration is off then a firmware update won’t fix a thing of course. Also, considering that I burned 2 other brands of regular DVD+R discs and have been able to read them in the drive with no problem seems to indicate that it is either the DL discs or a problem with reading DL.

Of course I can shoot that last hypothesis down as well, because the BenQ can write those discs in a way so that the Samsung can read them. Aargh, this ain’t helping :wink:

It sounds like my final recourse here is to get some other brand of DVD+R DL and see if the drive likes that better. And all of this for a $30 drive…

#16

SH-S203N and Verb works well on my new baby.

#17

Okay, considering the last response I finally decided that an RMA might be in order. Although Samsung’s RMA process is a bit messy (e-mail takes a couple of days and first try did not work) they did replace my S203N with a new one. I’m happy to report this one works perfectly with the RITEK discs :smiley:

I guess the media is not always to blame :wink: