# Is my DVD Burner on its way out?

## Shining Arcanine

I have a Pioneer DVR-212D in my desktop. When my desktop used to run Windows, I would have trouble burning Memorex CD-RW 24x discs under Nero and I would need to lower the write speeds to get it to work. I now run Gentoo Linux and tried burning one of the same discs with K3B. My burner is supposed to be able to burn CD-RW discs at 40x, but when it tried to burn at 24x, it said that my "medium or burner" did not support it.

While I suspect that this means that my burner has seen better days, I want a second opinion on this. It seems like optical writers always die on me, while usually retaining their ability to read. I can recall at least one relative making similar observations. Also, assuming that my writer is dying on me, I would like to know, does have any recommendations for a well designed DVD Burners that is reliable enough that I can expect it to outlive my PC's usefulness? I really do not like to replace burners every few years and the only burner that I ever not had to replace because it died was a Samsung SM-352B, which I had to replace because I needed a SATA drive when I was upgrading to a Core 2 Duo.

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## Aries97

All CD/DVD burners have a finite life span.  As it was explained to me: While burning a disc, dust or imperfections in the lens or mirrors cause some of the intense laser light to bounce back and strike the laser diode.  Eventually it actually burns it self out.  The more powerful the laser the more abuse it can take before it can't produce light intense enough to burn a disc.

Personally I find that a cheap burner (like $25 these days) lasts for about 200 DVD's worth of burning.  A more expensive burner might last a bit longer, or it might be a cheap burner repackaged with a different brand name.

The burner that has lasted the longest for me was a Plextor, I burned over 600 CD's with it before it died. - But it did die.  And for what I paid for it I could have bought six cheap burners.

My advice:  Verify your disc every time your burn!!!!!   If the verification fails, throw out the burner and put in a new cheap one.  I find this satisfying when I have a spare on hand, and frustrating as hell when I have to wait for one to arrive.

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## Shining Arcanine

 *Aries97 wrote:*   

> All CD/DVD burners have a finite life span.  As it was explained to me: While burning a disc, dust or imperfections in the lens or mirrors cause some of the intense laser light to bounce back and strike the laser diode.  Eventually it actually burns it self out.  The more powerful the laser the more abuse it can take before it can't produce light intense enough to burn a disc.
> 
> Personally I find that a cheap burner (like $25 these days) lasts for about 200 DVD's worth of burning.  A more expensive burner might last a bit longer, or it might be a cheap burner repackaged with a different brand name.
> 
> The burner that has lasted the longest for me was a Plextor, I burned over 600 CD's with it before it died. - But it did die.  And for what I paid for it I could have bought six cheap burners.
> ...

 

Wow, you are lucky, I seem to only get a few dozen burns per burner before issues start to occur. I always do disc verifications when I burn discs and my usage pattern is like this:

Read a disc

Read another disc

Do nothing for several months

Read a disc

Do nothing for a few more months

Burn a disc

Read a disc

Maybe a few weeks past

Burn another disc

Read a disc

A few months pass

Etcetera

What is your usage pattern like? It sounds like you are just constantly burning in comparison to what I do. The only Plextor I have ever had was DOA. At the time, I assumed was an incompatibility with my motherboard, so I brought my current Pioneer drive and left the Plextor drive in storage for a few years until I needed it again a few days ago, when I discovered it had been a DOA issue rather than a compatibility issue. I had mistaken it being DOA for it being incompatible because this was when SATA optical drives were just becoming available and I did not expect things to magically work.

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## Aries97

Yeah, I burn discs regularly.  I'd guess 10ish a week for the past 6 or 7 years. But I burn in bursts.  Right now I'm way behind because I'm procrastinating hoping that the back log will convince me it's time to move to Blu-Ray. 

I'm really sorry to hear about your bad luck with burners, and DOA hardware is just the worst!  With a bunch of time between uses you might consider blowing out the drive with compressed air before you burn a disc.  Not sure how much that will help, but it could get the dust off the laser.

I've been told that the faster speed you burn at the less damage the laser endures, because it's on for a shorter period of time.  But I assume the intensity has to be turned up to burn at higher speeds.  I burn at as high a speed as I can.  If there is an error at high speed, I usually will try again at a lower speed.  If that works, it seems to me the drive, although still useful,  is on it's way out.

As for your burner being able to burn at 40x.  That's crazy fast!   CD's can potentially disintegrate at a little over 50x.  I've seen flawed discs shatter inside a drive at top speed.  Also super high speed media that's reliable and cheap is not terribly easy to find.  You generally won't find any in a retail store.  

Also is that a max speed or the average speed across the whole disc.  Drives can be CAV, PCAV, CLV, or ZCLV.  That 40x might be referring to the max speed of a ZCLV drive.  so one section of the disc can be read/written at 40x; but when some invisible boundary is reached, it slows down to 32x, then again to 24x then again to 16x etc..

http://www.cdrfaq.org/

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## Aries97

Shoot I got it backwards.  The speed increases as it goes...

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## Shining Arcanine

 *Aries97 wrote:*   

> Yeah, I burn discs regularly.  I'd guess 10ish a week for the past 6 or 7 years. But I burn in bursts.  Right now I'm way behind because I'm procrastinating hoping that the back log will convince me it's time to move to Blu-Ray. 
> 
> I'm really sorry to hear about your bad luck with burners, and DOA hardware is just the worst!  With a bunch of time between uses you might consider blowing out the drive with compressed air before you burn a disc.  Not sure how much that will help, but it could get the dust off the laser.
> 
> I've been told that the faster speed you burn at the less damage the laser endures, because it's on for a shorter period of time.  But I assume the intensity has to be turned up to burn at higher speeds.  I burn at as high a speed as I can.  If there is an error at high speed, I usually will try again at a lower speed.  If that works, it seems to me the drive, although still useful,  is on it's way out.
> ...

 

Well, my media is only rated for 24x speeds, but both k3b today and nero when I ran windows refused to allow me to burn at that speed. So far, it seems that 10x speed burns are problem free while higher burn speeds result in errors being found during disc verification. I have not tried to determine the upper limit on what is safe, but 10x is somewhere within it.

I had a DVD+R that I burned a day or two ago. My burner is rated to burn DVD+Rs at 18x while my DVR+R said it could burn at 16x, but I burned it at 4x out of fear that the issues I am having with CD-RWs would manifest themselves with the DVD+R, and I did not want that to happen, as there is no way to erase it and try again.

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## Aries97

I hear ya, 4x DVD+R is about all I get but for me it's a hard drive / cpu issue.  The old machine that I do most of my burns on is old (1.2Ghz 32 bit Single Core), and it has an ancient hard drive! (Got it at an auction at least 5 years ago.) - Slow and small, but I bet it will be 30 years before it fails.

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