Lite-on dying?

[scriptasylum]

For a while now, my Lite-on 52/24/52x drive has been acting a little funny. In Nero, it takes a long time (~2 minutes) before it will start actually recording. During that time, I can hear it spin up, then down, up, down, etc, and finally it will start recording.

At first I thought it was nVidia's IDE driver. But, I've reformatted and re-installed XP using M$ generic IDE driver and it still did it.

Then, I thought it was crappy media, so I got different brand media with the same result. That didn't really make sense because Nero would pick the correct speed (52x) when recording, it just doesn't go that fast.

I've tried configuring it as Slave, then Master, then all by itself, and there was no difference. The DVD drive when using the same port runs fine.

I've even tried flashing it with the latest (correct) firmware from Lite-on.

I'm using the newest version of Nero. Like, I said, it's a fresh OS installation. Is there something wrong with the drive that is fixable? I would hope so, it's only about 1 year old or less.

 

[dreamworks]

My Lite-On 52x-32x-52x is just about the same. I bought it like less than a month ago but I find it to be .. rather not really good. Sometimes it takes a long time to read a CD, or maybe it doesn't even register at all. But when I put the same disc into the DVD rom, it reads fine.

Sorry mate .. maybe its just Lite-On??

For a while now, my Lite-on 52/24/52x drive has been acting a little funny. In Nero, it takes a long time (~2 minutes) before it will start actually recording. During that time, I can hear it spin up, then down, up, down, etc, and finally it will start recording.

At first I thought it was nVidia's IDE driver. But, I've reformatted and re-installed XP using M$ generic IDE driver and it still did it.

Then, I thought it was crappy media, so I got different brand media with the same result. That didn't really make sense because Nero would pick the correct speed (52x) when recording, it just doesn't go that fast.

I've tried configuring it as Slave, then Master, then all by itself, and there was no difference. The DVD drive when using the same port runs fine.

I've even tried flashing it with the latest (correct) firmware from Lite-on.

I'm using the newest version of Nero. Like, I said, it's a fresh OS installation. Is there something wrong with the drive that is fixable? I would hope so, it's only about 1 year old or less.

 

[scriptasylum]

Hmmm, that's not so good news! And I always thought Lite-On was good stuff! Hopefully it's a fluke...

At least you should be able to RMA it...

 

[Hipster Doofus]

I've been using the 52/24/52x for a few months now. Had no issues with it.......so far.
Have you tried a different burning program with it? burnatonce is easy to use & freeware.

Also try, if not already done, turning off xp's burner. Right click the burner/properties/recording.

 

[ming]

That doesn't sound good at all. I've used Lite-on without any problems at all.
Got dvd roms and cdrw drives of that brand. They've all worked fine on all my machines, and is still running smoothly.

One area you might like to add into consideration is the version of Nero you are using. It's not always true that the latest version will give the best or better performance over the previous one. I've noticed that Nero does not pick up the 'actual' write speed it is really writing at, but displays the max write speed.
When I had Nero 3 or 4 (can't remember which), it used to display the 'actual' write speed. i.e. the write speed displayed in that grey box will fluctuate up and down depending on the rate the data is being transferred.

 

[LeeJend]

MEDIA, MEDIA, MEDIA

The three most important things in burning! The faster the burn the more important good media is. I use only IMATION in my lite-on and get excellent results.

It could be the burners but it sounds to me like the burner is having a hard time evaluating the burn characteristics of your media (that's why it's thrashing at start of burn).

Is it 52x media?
Is it a good brand media?
Have you gone to a new spindle since the last time you had good results?

Check out www.cdfreaks.com for media recommendations and information on your particular drives. Also, check if there is a firmware update. But read the posts about the new firmware before updating. LITE-ON does not allow you to go back to an older firmware! It can be done but requires a hack.

Also, is the drive exposed to cigarette smoke or a dusty environment? If so get a laser cleaning kit.

 

[dreamliner77]

LeeJend- Just so you know Imation is considered to be low quality media (made by CMC magnetic)

The best are considered
Taiyo Yuden (Fuji, TDK, TY, others)
Verbatim AZO
Mitsumi
Kodak Gold (if you can find them)


Use CDRIdentifier v1.63 to read the atip info from a disk and see the manufacturer.
Ritek

 

[Electronic Punk]

You guys checked for firmware updates?

www.rpc1.com is an excellent source.

 

[Electronic Punk]

(cept the site is down at the moment ;p)

 

[scriptasylum]

Thanks All,

Well, I have tried different brand media, but that didn't help at all.

I have tried flashing the newest firmware available for my drive direct from Lite-on. I do see that rpc1.com has newer firmware, but since the drive simply started having trouble on its own, I really don't think it's that.

I was using the version right before 6 when it started happening, that's why I went to Nero6.

I have used some canned air to clean out any dust, but no-go. We don't smoke in the "computer room" and the rest of my case (inside and out) is almost clean enough to eat on.

Something I forgot to mention; I also tried different IDE cable, which did not help either.

The more I think about the symptoms, when it started happening (when nothing was changed), what I've done to fix the trouble, and the fact that a complete OS re-install didn't help; leads me to believe it is "bad". It still reads disks fine at a pretty high speed, it just has trouble burning. It will still burn, but it seems like it burns at 4x or something, and there's a substantial amount of time from where it fills the caches to when it actually starts burning the disk. So, I guess I have a 52x CDRW that has downgraded to a 4x CDRW. 🙂

Thanks to all for their suggestions...

 

[ming]

Well, hope you understand this, but no cd writers will ever reach 52x write unless you're filling the outter part of the cd. (i.e. writing 650mb of data)
You're more likely to reach maybe 12-24x max for general cd burning (upto 300mb of data).

 

[scriptasylum]

Well, hope you understand this, but no cd writers will ever reach 52x write unless you're filling the outter part of the cd. (i.e. writing 650mb of data)
You're more likely to reach maybe 12-24x max for general cd burning (upto 300mb of data).

Well, yeah, I do realize that 52x is theoretical and only at the outside edges of the disk, but my drive is running much slower than it used to at all portions of the disk. It doesn't even spin up as fast as it used to. And, like I said, it takes forever to start writing; it'll spin up and down several times before it decides to start writing.