DVD Burner problem

[Dean C]

Hey,

My manufacturer came out this morning to replace my dvd burning drive. The problem I had with it, was that it reports the wrong support burn speeds to my burning programs. I've tried with:

- Different burning programs
- XP and Vista
- the disks in someone elses computer (works fine).
- different IDE channels

So now that I have had the actual burner replaced and the same problem remains I can't think what it could possibly be. The only thing I have yet to try is the new burner in a different PC.

Any ideas?

Regards,
- Dean

[Joe Gronlund]

Is there a firmware upgrade available?

[Dean C]

Yep, just upgraded and it hasn't made any difference. I also switched the IDE cable with no luck.

Edit: I am burning to an 8x dvd-r and I selected 1x as my burn speed and you can see for yourself that it's burning at 2.1x:

[mlx]

Even if you are using the latest available firmware, the firmware might indeed be the problem. AFAIK that's usually where the burner gets ALL its information from how to burn a disc. That's also why it's even possible that some burners won't burn some media at all.

I'm not sure if there's an easy solution for your problem if a firmware upgrade doesn't help. You might want to try different media. Personally I have been very happy with Verbatim.

And about this problem in general ... some Plextor drives have a feature called AutoStrategy. It automatically optimizes the write strategy even for unknown media. So I guess it should also always allow you to burn a disc at max speed no matter what the firmware says. Obviously that might not be a helpful answer right now, but it's something to think about when buying a new drive. I have a PX-755SA with that AutoStrategy feature and I have been more than happy with it. Never had any problems with any media.


Oh well, could it be that I just totally misunderstood your problem? I thought it would be about not being able to burn at max speed. I guess I should have paid more attention to your post including that screenshot. All I can say about it that the lowest speed supported by my PX-755SA is indeed 2X as well. 1X might no longer be supported by modern drives I guess. I'm not sure about that though.

[Dean C]

It's definately not the media, as my friends computer downstairs is reporting the correct supported speeds when I put the blank discs in his PC.

[Joe Gronlund]

What other device is on the IDE channel, if any device at all??