I'm trying to burn an .MDS/.MDF protected image using the latest release of Alcohol120. I'm burning it in a RAW/DAO format to retain the protection.

If I make one CD it works fine. If I try to burn to multiple drives I get an error (shown below).

Anyone out there burning to multiple drives?

How's it working for you?

Thanks,

Mike

16:03:13 (E _NEC DVD_RW ND-3550A(2:0) - [Write Lead-In area ERROR]: -12508 - -151
S:KEY - 03/0C/00 - "Write Error"
16:03:13 (E _NEC DVD_RW ND-3550A(2:0): Recording failed!
16:03:13 Error message: [03/0C/00] - Write Error
16:03:13 (E _NEC DVD_RW ND-3550A(2:0): Recording failed!
16:03:23 (F _NEC DVD_RW ND-3550A(2:1) - [Write Lead-In area ERROR]: -12508 - -151
S:KEY - 03/0C/00 - "Write Error"
16:03:24 (F _NEC DVD_RW ND-3550A(2:1): Recording failed!
16:03:24 Error message: [03/0C/00] - Write Error
16:03:24 (F _NEC DVD_RW ND-3550A(2:1): Recording failed!

S:KEY - 03/0C/00 - "Write Error"

This is a media error. Please try different media, or (if available) a different burner.

Thanks for the reply.

I can burn single CD and it works OK. If I do multiples, I get the error. The media is Ritek. I dont buy off brand CD's and I've never had a problem burning 100's of CD & DVD's in the same drives. The drives are NEC3550A's. Any known problems with Alcohol working with these drives?

I'll see if I have some other media to try, but I think it's a bug. I reported this to Alcohol support. I'm hoping they can test it with the same parameters. I can even send the image (.mds) file if they need it to test. It's about 65mb.

Thanks,

Mike

Error message:
"Something is wrong with the recording procedure"

Tried a different media (Linkyo 52X) and tried the other 2 drives (It's a 4 drive burner). So if I burn 1 in any one of the drives, with the same settings, it works OK. If I try to burn 2 (or more I'm assuming) it fails and reports the error.
Also, burned at 40X just to be safe. Although a single will burn at 48X with no problem.

Mike

The best thing to do would be to send a System Report from within Alcohol to the Support Team for review. Maybe they can help you figure out the problem.

If I reduce the burn speed down to 10X it works. It says it's actually burning at 8X. 11min:38sec is Painfully Slow. It should be making 4 CD's every 3min.

So If I can burn 1 at 48x in Alcohol and I can burn 4 at a time, at 48X using Nero, you cant tell me it's bad media or a problem with the drives. Something is wrong with the software and no one seems to care.

So I'll ask the questions again....
Anyone out there burning to multiple drives?
How's it working for you?

Mike Mattera

Are you sure how fast Nero is burning? Nero lies about it's burning speed unless you set a registry key to make it show the correct speed. Edit the following key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Ahead\Nero - Burning Rom\Recorder

Create a DWord value titled:

ShowSingleRecorderSpeed

Set a value of "1". Though in retrospect that may only work for a single drive, not multiple drives.

Alternatively, if you don't want to edit the registry, you can download this self-extracting RAR file I created to automate the process.

http://rockent.brinkster.net/Files/TrueNeroSpeed.exe

Lets just do some simple math rather than dig into the registry.

Alcohol burns 4 CD's at 8X (the true burn speed according to you) and it takes almost 12 minutes.

Nero burns 4 CD's in 3 minutes

12 minutes ÷ 3 minutes = 4 times
4 x 8X = 32X

So OK Nero has lied to me about the speed. It does not change the fact that 3 minutes is faster than 12 minutes on the same PC with the same media.

Alcohol obviously has a problem with multiple burners.

And still.... no one has answered the questions.
What's that tell ya?
So I'll ask the questions again....
Anyone out there burning to multiple drives?
How's it working for you?

Mike

Update: Alcohol cant burn multiples even at 8X without errors.It burned the first set of 4 OK. Then on the second set I get....

(From the log file)
Session 01:
Track 01: Mode 1, Length: 354262(691.9 MB), Address: 000000
################

#### Dumping/Recording Progress Log ###############
********* Time stamp of this log file: 6/29/2007 10:41:09 AM *********
10:41:10 Processor info: AMD Athlon(tm) processor (1195MHz)
10:41:10 Memory Available to Windows: 523,760 KB
10:41:10 Memory Buffer size: 204 MB
10:41:10 Image file loading: D:\CD_Burn_Templates\Protected-Images\TFM-ECMillSM1.ccd
10:41:10 Source Info: Session: 1, Track: 1, Length: 691.9 MB / 078:43:37
10:41:23 (E _NEC DVD_RW ND-3550A(2:0): Recording Method/Speed
10:41:24 Recording - RAW DAO - 8X (1200 KB/Sec)
10:41:24 (F _NEC DVD_RW ND-3550A(2:1): Recording Method/Speed
10:41:24 Recording - RAW DAO - 8X (1200 KB/Sec)
10:41:24 (G _NEC DVD_RW ND-3550A(1:0): Recording Method/Speed
(E _NEC DVD_RW ND-3550A(2:0): RAW DAO Write Mode - RAW-PW(96)
10:41:24 Recording - RAW DAO - 8X (1200 KB/Sec)
10:41:24 (H _NEC DVD_RW ND-3550A(1:1): Recording Method/Speed
(F _NEC DVD_RW ND-3550A(2:1): RAW DAO Write Mode - RAW-PW(96)
10:41:24 Recording - RAW DAO - 8X (1200 KB/Sec)
10:41:24 (E _NEC DVD_RW ND-3550A(2:0): BURN-Free activated
10:41:24 (F _NEC DVD_RW ND-3550A(2:1): BURN-Free activated
(G _NEC DVD_RW ND-3550A(1:0): RAW DAO Write Mode - RAW-PW(96)
10:41:24 (G _NEC DVD_RW ND-3550A(1:0): BURN-Free activated
(H _NEC DVD_RW ND-3550A(1:1): RAW DAO Write Mode - RAW-PW(96)
10:42:17 (H _NEC DVD_RW ND-3550A(1:1): BURN-Free activated
10:42:43 (E _NEC DVD_RW ND-3550A(2:0) - [Write Lead-In area ERROR]: -11607 - -151
S:KEY - 03/0C/00 - "Write Error"
10:42:43 (E _NEC DVD_RW ND-3550A(2:0): Recording failed!
10:42:43 Error message: [03/0C/00] - Write Error
10:42:43 (E _NEC DVD_RW ND-3550A(2:0): Recording failed!
10:42:48 (F _NEC DVD_RW ND-3550A(2:1) - [Write Lead-In area ERROR]: -11607 - -151
S:KEY - 03/0C/00 - "Write Error"
10:42:48 (F _NEC DVD_RW ND-3550A(2:1): Recording failed!
10:42:48 Error message: [03/0C/00] - Write Error
10:42:48 (F _NEC DVD_RW ND-3550A(2:1): Recording failed!
10:42:52 (G _NEC DVD_RW ND-3550A(1:0) - [Write Lead-In area ERROR]: -11607 - -151
S:KEY - 03/0C/00 - "Write Error"
10:42:52 (H _NEC DVD_RW ND-3550A(1:1) - [Write Lead-In area ERROR]: -11607 - -151
S:KEY - 03/0C/00 - "Write Error"
10:42:52 (G _NEC DVD_RW ND-3550A(1:0): Recording failed!
10:42:52 Error message: [03/0C/00] - Write Error
10:42:52 (H _NEC DVD_RW ND-3550A(1:1): Recording failed!
10:42:52 Error message: [03/0C/00] - Write Error
10:42:52 (G _NEC DVD_RW ND-3550A(1:0): Recording failed!
10:42:52 (H _NEC DVD_RW ND-3550A(1:1): Recording failed!
10:42:52 Image file loading aborted!
10:42:55 Something is wrong with the recording procedure! Please check the log file and report any errors to Technical Support.
#####################

Now that you've provided at least some sort of System Report, I can at least tell you what Alcohol is reporting.

S:KEY - 03/0C/00 - "Write Error"

This is a media error. The only suggestion I can make is that you try different media or upgrade your firmware.

Well I've been trying to send systems reports for the past week, but no one at Alcohols IT dept can figure out how to let my email past the spam filter.

If Alcohol can burn a single CD at 48X, doesn't it stand to reason that the media and drives are compatible. I have used 2 different media types (see the thread above). The only thing thats not working is using Alcohol in multiple drives.

But I'm willing to try anything. At your suggestion I'm updating the firmware now. We'll see how that works.

HAVE YOU TRIED TO BURN AN IMAGE TO MULTIPLE DRIVES???
(Yes I'm yelling. I would live for someone to answer the question)

And still.... no one has answered the questions.

So I'll ask the questions again....
Anyone out there burning to multiple drives?
How's it working for you?

Mike

I am not, or I would have answered you previously. Though I know the Alcohol devs have tested with up to 10 drives in the past.

So did they find that they had to reduce burn speed to burn multiples? At what speed were they burning 10 drives at once? When was the last time they tested 10 drives at once? Has anyone tried it in the past week that I'm been asking bout this problem?

These are the kind of things I'm curious about.
Why can it burn 1 at 48X and only burn 4 at 8X? Is that normal?

Mike Mattera

To be fair, it was a while ago. As for the rest of your questions, I don't know the answer. Sorry.

As you must be using a retail version of our software due to the limitations of the trial versions when it comes to writing to multiple drives, i suggest you ask for access to the Alcohol purchased users support forum here http://forum.alcohol-soft.com/index.php?showtopic=23801 where development are more likely look into the problem for you, unfortunatly development do not visit 3rd party forums and this question is more for development than general support.

Phoenix: That would be great! Do you think you get their spam filter to allow my email address to go thru at the Alcohol site? It seems that the 20 emails Ive sent are never received. Of course the only way to get registered on the Alcohol support forum is to send an email. Excellent Catch 22

Yes it is a retail version.

It seems a number of Alcohol support people hang out here. But I still dont get much useful information. I might ask 3-4 questions and rarely do I get an answer to more than 1 question.

Have you burned to multiple drives?
How's it working for you?
Why does it burn 1 at 48X and only burn 4 at 8X?
Is that normal?
What is an acceptable CPU processor speed?
Are there CD\DVD drives that work better with Alcohol?

I tried different media. I've upgraded my firmware.
I'm willing to try anything. Do you guys have any suggestions?

Mike Mattera

Mike.

From your name here i think i have located your details on our DB i have created an account for you on our purchased support forum, with the same username as here and your password the same as you use to log in to your account on our sales page, if i ahve the correct person you should be able to log in to our purchased users support, if you do please start a new post and quote this info below, we can then take it from there.

All mail coming through from the link i sent you are recieved, its possible your server does not accept our replies, but if that is the case we often reply from private email accounts not linked to Alcohol servers if we are aware our mails are not getting through, for example aol mail servers block alot of ligitimate emails from us. but even so you could still use our trial support to contact us while we do visit 3rd party forums we do not do it as often as our own.

Some times we requier information from you that you can not post on third party forums. fo example the PM system on here does not allow for very large texts.

So lets look at this.
1. Have you burned to multiple drives?
How's it working for you?
A. Yes and fine.

2.Why does it burn 1 at 48X and only burn 4 at 8X?
Is that normal?
A. Just because a writer can write one disc at 48x this does not mean that 4 will write at 12x

3.What is an acceptable CPU processor speed?
A. Depends on the system.

4. Are there CD\DVD drives that work better with Alcohol?
A. Drives that can write RAW DAO.

Can your drives write RAW DAO. Try using RAW SAO

Can you let me have a log of your successfull 48x burning

Phoenix: THANK YOU!

Detailed information is now on the Alcohol User Forum.

Tried burning multiples in the SAO format and it burns the image faster (16X) but without the copy protection. So that wont work for me. Has to be DAO

Report Logs and system info are available at the Alcohol forum under the topic: Burning Protected .IMG file to multiple drives

Thank you for answering each of my questions.

Questions #2 follow up:
So I should expect it to be slower with more drives?
I have not experienced that before. That's normal?

Questions #4 follow up:
Which drives do you like best?

Mike Mattera

Mike, Now that you have posted in our support forum We can continue this there

I bought A120 because I run a business that produces video training cd's. I was hoping to use it to burn x number of cd's in 4 cd drives at a time. I was able to burn 1 drive in the trial version and it worked great. So based on the results of the trial and the fact that it says it can burn to multiple drives, I bought it. $39, not a big deal.

Since then I've wasted countless hours and stacks of CD's. I tried everything everyone suggested. I invested in more memory ($80 of memory to make my $40 program work). Still no consistency in how it works. I set it to 12X it burns at 8X. At 8X it might burn 2 set of 4 cd's then the next set is coasters. So I set it to 4X. It still burns at 8X. Why? Who knows. Still the same thing burn 4 sets of 4 cd's and then burn 2 set of 4 coasters.

Support requests trials and reports. I do them, send them in and I never hear back what they learned from it. Now Phoenix is pissed at me because I ask too many questions, probably let my frustration show thru in my postings and so I may never get any help.

So here I am a guy trying to run a business using A120. I'm not some guy playing games, bootlegging games, ripping dvd's. I'm trying to use A120 as a business tool to produce my product and it's failed miserably.

I was hoping Support and/or Development team members could come up with some kind of solution for this erratic burning.

I need to burn Clone Compatible .IMG files in a RAW DAO format to multiple drives. If anyone knows of a program that can do that please send me an email mike@mmattera.com

I tried a program called CD-Mate. Interface shares some similarities with A120. I'm wondering if it used the same engine. It didn't work either. I'm open to suggestions

Mike Mattera

Phoenix has responded to your post in the Alcohol-Soft forum and I suggest you read it before making baseless accusations about who is annoyed at who.

Development takes time and things will not happen overnight and from time to time we may need to ask more questions especially when we cannot reproduce the issue that a customer may be having.

It isn't the same engine and the fact that it also failed on your rig suggests that your problem is hardware rather than software related.