Hi all

I'm out of hope. I got a NEC 3540 last july and 2 packs of Verbatim printable 16X media, 25 DVD-R and 25 DVD+R, thinking these were good discs... Managed to burn maybe 1 or 2 DVDs, but then I began to toast discs for no reason. Same system (old '99 PC with WinME, yeah I know), same everything... every now and then the burn fails right from the start with a nice PCE and the surface only has a thin line for the lead-in.
I then put XP on it. Managed to burn probably 2 DVDs between multiple failures. I also tried to put 98SE on the machine... First burn, successful... YAY!!! next one, same settings, same media... boom. PCE.

So, now I'm back to WinME, and I've just toasted 2 other DVD-R.

I have a Verbatim +RW 4X that just *works* everytime. But no scheme regarding failures, it can fail on a -R, or on a +R, doesn't matter. 4X, 8X, even 16X (the PC can't follow the beat here, obviously, but the burnproof thing takes care of it).

I even tried to create ready-to-burn ISO files from my data... no go.
Tried Alcohol with the same homemade ISO... disc failed.

Could it be a double bad batch of Verbatims? (unlikely, both -R and +R hehe)
Could my NEC be defective?
Can you recommend a better burning software than Nero? (damnit I shouldn't have gotten the OEM version with the burner)

I'm going to kill someone if I don't find a way to burn all that data clogging up my computer!!!

Thanks a million for any help ;-)

Verbatim DVDs are generally well thought of so it really is unlikely to be a media problem.

It could well be a burn speed issue as burning an RW @ 4x works. Burning 16x media @ 4x , which might be all your system is capable of , has a likelihood of failure.

What is your PCs spec?
Have you updated the firmware on the NEC as quite often the initial firmware releases are quickly superceded to correct burn issues, media compatibility etc.

If you can create an ISO image from Nero that is 4gb or less then you could try burning that image with ImgBurn as this is a very highly regarded free burning app. Not sure if it runs on WinME ( ) though.

Thanks for the suggestions Tim. I don't think I've even tried to burn at 16X yet... I'll see. Highest I've done is 12X, it failed. 8X, too.
I'm going to try ImgBurn...

Funny thing is, I upgraded the firmware quite long ago, thinking it'd be better to have the latest firmware installed. I've no idea where to find the original firmware, just to check if the latest is not the cause of my problems and if I'm not better off with the factory settings...

My PC is a PII-450 with 320MB of RAM, 120GB hitachi that can do 7MB/s under WinME (more under XP but XP is buggy with my TV card).

Is it not a good idea to put the burner and the 120GB HD on the same "cord", with the HD as master... and the burner at the end of the "chain"? I'm sure I'm making an @ss of myself by saying this... anyway. Would it be safer to put the burner on its own IDE channel, and the 2 harddisks together? Where do I put the master (end or midway?)

To have a successful burn it's almost essential to have the burner on a separate IDE cable to the source - HDD in your case. With a PC of such a low spec the "almost" can be removed , so read essential. And the master always goes on the end connection, slave in the middle.

I suspect that you're unlikely to be able to burn faster than 4x on your system with much hope of success. This would suggest that 4x media, 8x at most would be better suited than 16x - although the Verbs are good.

I'd suggest that you use good quality 80wire IDE cables, aka Ultra 66/100/133 , so that your HD can transfer data at maximum rate as 7MB/s is very slow which suggests that older 40wire cables are in use and probably that DMA is not enabled. Not sure how you do this on ME. Note that with these cables the system end , typically blue or marked as SYSTEM, MUST be connected to the motherboard.



Imgburn will tell you exactly how fast it's burning which can be useful.

The other thing is ensure that your HD is regularly defragged as this can be very significant in burning.

I've done that, we'll see if it helps.

So you mean I'd better get 4X media next time around? I thought faster media was capable of less (and I had the 16X just in case I get a new desktop system)

haha I feel like such a fool... never really looked into that 80-wire thing. Yes, 40-wire cables are inside.

thanks!

Try the cables first, with burner & HD source on separate IDE channels & see what happens.
If you can improve the HD throughput you might be lucky.

InfoTool - Configuration will tell you if DMA is enabled on your devices.

With most burners the Verbatim 16x certified DVD+R/-R media is pretty forgiving about which speed you burn them at, so unless you find out for sure that your particular drive doesn't burn these well at 4x, I would still recommend this media instead of buying older (or junk) 4x media.

Not all 16x or 8x media is this forgiving, however!

OK so I've put the burner on its own cable, both HDs and the burner have DMA enabled.

Created an ISO with Nero, then burned it at 4X with ImgBurn. Burn succeeded, and verification found nothing wrong. However, upon doing my usual check-up (video files, I played them each), about 10 of them were unreadable. No big deal, most of the disc is OK, but it worries me.

Will I have to visually check everything I burn?

Average speed was bad: 1.8X . The other day with one HD on each IDE channel, disk to disk transfers could reach 6 or 7MB/s... now I can only get write speeds as low as 3MB/s (video capture, so there's no disk-to-disk IDE-bandwidth sharing involved (I presume?). And the icing on the cake: copying files from the DVD gives the same poor speeds. No wonder I can only burn at 2X...

I'll try to get 80-wire cables just to test... aahhh it reminds me of the CDR times... when you were never sure of the outcome... russian roulette with 650MB and now it's 4.4GB.