I always use the hard drive as stepping stone - yes, it is a good idea. Same DVD ROM a LG4160B, but I have just updated the firmware following some advice on the previous thread I found.
Disc not damaged and label printed onto face.
On non-printables, I seem to be getting good reliabilty from Samsung Pleomax DVD-R8x
The error I was getting was CRC error on the last 2 VOBs and the disc analysis in Nero confirms bad sectors.
