DVD writing errors?

[IO540]

I hope I haven't asked this Q here before...

I have two CD/DVD writers, both top-end Plextor ones, 712A and 755A.

Both are IDE.

Both write CDs fine, but fail to write DVDs most of the time. There are various verify errors. The 2nd one can also do dual-layer but that fails nearly always.

There are no reports of buffer underrun, except on CD writing (where I have seen reports like "buffer underrun avoided 50 times") but as I say CDs write fine.

The 755A has been replaced with a new one, with no difference.

I've tried setting the IDE cable type to different things in the BIOS.

The machine has two HDs but they are SATA not IDE. There is no other IDE device, and each writer is connected to its own controller, via its own cable. The motherboard is a fairly modern Gigabyte one, about 2GHz, with the usual four IDE connectors. Win2000 SP4, 1GB RAM, Nero StartSmart software.

Can anybody suggest anything? I am looking at getting a USB attached writer to solve this :ugh:

[Cypherus]

Sounds more like a software issue than hardware, you don't mention what software you are using though.
The one I have used for many years now is Ahead softwares NERO, which if I recall came free with something I picked up, I have never updated it, nor had cause to, it went on to record DVD's without a problem so I left it well alone.

[IO540]

Yes, tried all different media. There *is* a small difference in media and error rates, and possibly speeds, but nothing obvious.

To me, it seems like a process which is running and which is interfering with the data, either by corrupting it or by locking up the CPU for a while every so often.

I do see a strong improvement if I reboot the PC and do nothing before writing the DVD.

The daft thing is that I have just written a dual-layer DVD with a 6GB file, on an old 800MHz dell laptop with a USB2-attached Plextor writer, connected via wifi to a router which has an ethernet-connected 250GB network hard drive, on which the said file resides. So, the data travels over ethernet, over wifi (and 11b/g is actually only 11b when running P2P data), over USB, and gets written to a 2.4x speed dual layer DVD. And it worked just fine, verified fine. Technology is great when it works.

[Keef]

Did you say Windows 2000? I had serious problems with that and incompatibility with all sorts of "non-office-standard" hardware. Kit that wouldn't work with Win2K was fine when I upgraded to Win XP Pro.

Do you have a Win XP machine that you can try one of the DVD writers on?

[Cypherus]

Might sound a little trite, but your comment on high CPU cycles might be something I have come across a number of times, takes a little time to investigate but check your heat sinks on both the CPU/GPU and chipset, also that any fans are working, if there working, clean and free of dust and dirt not a problem, but if blocked or partially obstructed they may work OK while the comp is not under load but as it loads up or after a long period of running the heat build up can often mimic high process loads and cause a comp to slow to a crawl.

[IO540]

An update:

I installed a 2nd copy of win2000 on another partition, and installed an older version of Nero (6.3.something) under that. It worked perfectly.

Then I removed the latest Nero (the one with the fancy picture-based control panel, for idiot users) from the main installation and installed the older 6.3 one, and it works!

A mystery cleared up.

Thinking about it, it was the latest Nero software which the troubles started with, but it wasn't noticed because most of the time I was writing CDs, and they were always fine anyway.

It seems that one can use Nero with a dual-layer DVD writer (Plextor in this case) even though the program itself predates dual-layer DVD writers. It correctly reports "writing side 1, writing side 2" etc - I guess these messages may be coming from the drive itself...