i just got my 1655 today and flashed it to the BCDB fw and started to make some backups of items i needed to archive. when i ordered my 1655 from newegg i also picked up a 50pk of verbatim 8x made in taiwan dvd-r with a shiny surface. i have also included a scan from the drive i replaced - a nec2500a with ty dvd-rs. is it just the media or is the drive f*cked????















this one was from some old 4x memorex dvd-r i had laying around, it was sealed though

Scan at 8x speed!

here is the same disc that was the first one scanned in my original post now with a max scan speed of 8x:

The CMC AF1, which most people consider garbage (it's not, obviously, and burns fine on my burners), looks fine. The TYG02 looks fine as well, although you didn't burn close to the edge so it's not much to go by. Considering the burn quality of the other discs, it looks like a media issue with the Verbatims to me.

sounds good. the one ty02 helter skelter was as close as i could get it. should i try to get my $$$ back for these verbatims? i have never did this type of scan before so i don't know if what i am looking at is that bad. would you trust your data with them?

A while back I remember seen same bad MCC 02RG20 burns on 1655. Have you tried to enable SolidBurn for known media in QSuite? (Look for links in zebadee's sig.)

Can you run a transfer rate test on one of those Verb. discs.

i have not even used QSuite...and i will post a transfer test as soon as it is done

As this is a learning drive, try with SolidBurn on as Pinto suggested (it's off by default). It will take 5-6 for it to fine tune a write strategy for the media, and then if the results are satisfactory for YOU, continue using it and it will continue making the adjustments each disc, just on a smaller scale.

If you continue to have problems with a certain media code, try altering one setting (either burn speed or WOPC on/off).

will do. thanks

Hi,

your "benchmark" graph seems to indicate, that DMA might be off for your drive. Check and correct that, there is a useful link in the sig of jhtalisman.

Michael

Most likely that is the POF's and greatly increased PIF's showing their effect as it's at the end of the disc on the quality scans and TRT.

Nope, with drive in PIO mode you'll never reach anything above 2.4 read speed. Burst rate (24MB/s) confirms drive is running in UDMA-2 mode.

CPU usage (in this case) only indicates media reading problems and thus confirms dips/slowdowns in transfer rate test.
jhtalisman is right on spot.

initially when i first saw all the errors i checked and the the drive is connected at dma-2. i was really surprised to see the cpu utilization being so high as i am running a otpy144 @ 2.5GHz.

i have even tried putting the source iso on a scsi 10k rpm scsi hdd but had the same results.

funny thing is my dvd player plays them (assuming that the end parts where all the errors are would be at the end of the movie).

should i try to have verbatim take care of them or should i just use them up and never buy them again?

just a little worried for data backups because even my most heavily scratched riteck/ridata media that i burned over a year ago got a quality rating of ~65, and it was scratched up pretty good. i am afraid that with scratches the data will not be readable...am i wrong with this thinking?

FWIW, I use the Verbatim 8x (same MID as yours) for the majority of my work. I have a couple of hundred of these. My DW1655 with BCDB FW works really well with these as well as my PX-716A.

I recently ran into a couple spindles that showed errors like yours (maybe not quite as bad) and I returned them. Percentage wise though I still have a very good experience with these discs.

maybe i just won't worry about it as i did buy them from newegg so i would have to pay shipping back to them. i guess i will just throw it up to a bad batch. i might contact verbatim and see if i can get some type of voucher or something since these seem to be the worst i have seen on here in all the scans i have looked at.

thanks all for the great info
bob