Hello,

I have a rather strange problem. My DVD burner, which is Optiarc AD-5170A, doesn't seem to be able to read any of my Traxdata DVD-R's (16x) even though it detects the ones that are blank and is able to burn them.

It reads all other DVD's that I have, including Octron CD+RW, Imation CD+R, various magazine DVDs etc. I suspected that perhaps any laser defect that might be causing it became too sensitive to the color of the Traxdata DVD's (purple), but Imation has the same color yet can be read properly.

What's more, it was able to read them all not long ago and neither of these DVD's were burned more than a few months ago. They also work properly when I read them with another DVD reader. So degradation or media corruption of any sort is definitely out of the question.

All things considered it does seem like the burner's laser is getting defective. I am just puzzled that it is ONLY Traxdata DVD-R's which it wont read. How can a defect affect only a single type of DVD?? Why would this happen?

Anyway, most of these DVD's I burned at slower. They contain a number of video files. After burning I checked that I can watch them before storing them. I burned them so I can free some space on my HD and hopefully store them for viewing any time I want. (It is only since my visit to this forum that I learned traxdata's aren't actually good for this sort of use, and this is after I just bought a spindle of 25 of them ).

An interesting thing I discovered about the few of these DVDs that I tested, trying to read them with my (possibly defective) burner is that the dvd+rw-tools mediainfo command states the following:

READ TRACK INFORMATION[#1]:
Track State: complete,damaged

I wonder what "damaged" here refers to. These are the disks which I burned fine some months ago or so, the disks it read fine before and now suddenly wont.

Could it be that the burns were not good all along and now that the burner is crapping out (or whatever is happening) it is failing to read disks which have "damaged" track state? I mean, as the laser is getting defective it is getting more sensitive to burn errors?

If this is a sign that I should replace my burner I most certainly will. But I just wish to learn more about what happened here so I can know what NOT to do in the future. One thing I know is that I'll never buy Traxdata again. :S

Cheers

"They also work properly when I read them with another DVD reader. So degradation or media corruption of any sort is definitely out of the question."

dvd drives differ in their reading abilities. what is this other drive?

can your burner read a newly burned Traxdata?

The other one is an LG GDR-8163B DVD-ROM, an old one made on February 2005.

Also, the current burner can't read newly burned Traxdata DVDs anymores. It used to be able to do that, just as reading any other Traxdata's, but apparently not anymore.

what program are you using to burn and what is you burn speed?

I usually use Nautilus which has a CD burner plugin or K3B which is a pretty famous burning program for Linux users.

I think both use dvd+rw-tools as their backend for burning.

I am usually quite conservative with speeds because, since using some crappy Imation DVD's usually got me a bad burn (some files actually not working) I became pretty paranoid about burning DVDs. I tend to do DVDs around 4 to 8x or so. Although last couple of times I burned a traxdata I left it at "maximum possible", which picks the proper speed automatically.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, I just tried again some of these traxdata DVD's with my old LG reader and ran mediainfo and under "READ TRACK INFORMATION[#1]" now it says just "complete" instead of "complete,damaged". Seems like this info changes depending on the reader used, which could mean that even though while using the current burner tells me the track is damaged it might not be so, but rather the burner just couldn't read it properly and so it gives the (false) information that it's damaged.

Thanks

well i dont know about those programs, but i would guess max possible is not a safe speed.

do any of the video dvds play in your dvd player?

does your burning program keep a log? can you find it and post a portion containing traxdata burn?

I think in this case maximum possible may just be like "auto", as in maximum possible safe speeds.

I just tried an original movie DVD and it worked so yeah, video DVDs work.

About the logs, I don't have the old ones since I changed the OS, but I just burned a new one using K3B (successfully) and here is the log: http://pastebin.com/f161a8e73

Of course, even though the burn was successful, the burner would not read it.

Thanks

interesting log. ive never seen a log from this program.

looks like you are burning an audio dvd? or is this just a data dvd with mp3 files?

anyway looks like the burn speed jumps around to unreliable speeds.

"Current Write Speed" is 16.4x1352KBps.
5570560/4560777216 ( 0.1%) @1.0x,
14942208/4560777216 ( 0.3%) @0.2x
81419520/4560777216 ( 8.4%) @6.4x
467402752/4560777216 (10.2%) @3.1x
632913920/4560777216 (13.9%) @6.2x
657129472/4560777216 (14.4%) @2.4x
then pretty much stays at 4x for the rest of the burn

im not really sure what to make of this. i guess if you say the disc is good then it should by all means play in the Optiarc drive. strange?

maybe some else can help. sorry

id say dont buy these disc anymore and get some taiyo yuden branded dvd+r 8x media with the MID of YUDEN000T02.

such as these here.
http://www.rima.com/Merchant2/mercha...ory_Code=DVPTY

It's a data CD with various kinds of files, including images and mp3s too. I noticed while it was burning that the actual burning speed was rather low. I left it at "auto".

It sure is strange. Optiarc starts like it's gonna load it, but then stops and nothing happens. When I try to mount it manually (using the mount -t iso9660 /dev/hdb /media/cdrom command) in the system wide messages log it says:

attempt to access beyond end of device
hdb: rw=0, want=68, limit=4
isofs_fill_super: bread failed, dev=hdb, iso_blknum=16, block=16

That's what it always does when failing to read these DVDs.

Although I don't think the media is at issue here really I wont be buying Traxdata anymore, mostly because what I learned on this forum. I've got more than plenty of them now for short-term backups, iso burns and so on. For archiving I was thinking of buying Verbatim because I didn't see any Taiyo Yuden around here (in Zagreb, Croatia), but I'll look for it again.

Thank you for trying to help.

I think it's just a strange defection with the laser failing to read certain types of media like the traxdata ones, but I don't have many other types to test if it's only traxdata so it's still possible that it'd fail to read some other too. But the fact that the LG reader reads them fine yet Optiarc wont seems to be a fairly compelling evidence that the Optiarc is broken.

I was going to buy a SATA drive sooner or later anyway, and the warranty of this one has expired so.. no big deal. Feel free to suggest a good DVD burner (I was thinking Samsung, LiteON or LG).

Cheers

i dont know what burning apps are available for linux. but have you tried other burner apps. also i dont know why you would have to mount the dvd to read it. although as i said i dont know about linux either.

do you have a traxdata dvd with a dvd-video written to it?

There are a few more, but I think all of them use the same basic backend for burning so I'm not sure it makes much of a difference.

Usually you don't have to mount if the operating system does it automatically and nowadays most versions of Linux do. I tried to mount manually only because it didn't do so by itself (due to the reading problem).

If divx video files count as dvd-video then yes, most of the traxdata dvd's I burned have video on it (which works well with the LG reader).

Btw, do you know of "Matt Silver" branded Verbatim disks? I wonder if those are the good quality ones (from MCC or TY?).

well this web page looks like official verbatim page.
http://www.verbatim-europe.co.uk/en_...silver_21.html
http://www.verbatim-europe.co.uk/en_...silver_46.html

might want to check out the blank media forum for good buys in europe.
http://club.cdfreaks.com/f33/

Seems like they could be at least MCC. Might buy a few at first to check and then more later.

Thanks.

your welcome

might find member Arachne