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Bad burns and burn marks on disc. Also slow reads.
I have had a Dimension 8400 for a year and have been able to burn with no problems until about a month ago. It seems like every two or three discs I burn is a bad one, and I can tell it is a bad burn before even playing it because there is like a little round burn spot on the edge of the disc. I thought it may be the media but I tried the media that I used to use, and it makes a little mark on the disc near the middle in the same spot each time, and it never did that before. However those ones seem to work. Its just the ones with the splotch on the outer edge that does notwork. Out of about 50 discs I burned, at least 20 were bad. Has the burner gone bad?
Another thing I noticed is that before, when copying, I used to let the disc read from my other drive and then write on the burner. Suddenly, it started taking forever (at least twice as long) to read from that drive and it would really slow the computer down. If I let it read from the burner now, it goes the normal speed. Any ideas on these issues?
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Posted January 28th, 2006 16:00
Thank you for that link. I did that and both drives were set to DMA if available. However, the CD/DVD drive that started reading so slow is currently in PIO mode, and the burner is in Ultra DMA Mode 2. So are you saying the problem is because both aren't in DMA mode? How do I get them both in DMA mode then? Thanks again for your quick response.1326
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Posted January 28th, 2006 18:00
Hi Shortdawg,
John is currently off-line.
Click on the CD/RW link in my post and scroll to Section 20, article 3 and see if this will re-set the DMA mode properly.
If it does not, enter the BIOS and verify that the IDE channel is set to Auto and that both Drive 0 & Drive 1 are ON.
Best Regards!
God, grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway,
the good fortune to run into the ones I do and the eyesight to tell the
difference.
CD/RW Link
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Posted February 1st, 2006 05:00
Ok thanks. I did all that and now they are both in Ultra DMA Mode 2. I will pay attention to see if it still burns bad. I read a disc and the CD drive does not read slow anymore. That part makes sense. But how would this affect the bad burns since that drive was in DMA before?1326
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Posted February 3rd, 2006 12:00
ShortDawg,
These new drives for one reason or another tend to have problems running in PIO mode. The old CD/RW drives could run in either and you really would not notice.
Best Regards!
God, grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway,
the good fortune to run into the ones I do and the eyesight to tell the
difference.
CD/RW Link
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Posted February 11th, 2006 16:00
I emailed Dell this problem and they immediately sent a replacement burner. I have only tried burning a few, and using the Sony discs that made the funny mark in the middle of the disc, it still does that. Those discs play fine though. But looking back at older ones I burned on that same brand, there was no mark in the middle of it. I have not had the bad burns with the small circle near the edge of the disc on the TDK ones though.1326
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Posted February 11th, 2006 17:00
@ShortDawg wrote:
Actually correct that, I just tried to play the entire disc that I was talking about that had the funny mark in the middle of it and it kept freezing up. I will let you know if I get bad ones with the other brand of discs. What else could this be since the new drive is doing the same thing?
Optical burning starts at the hub and spirals out to the edge in one continuous path. If you have some marks elsewhere as you have described it is damaged.1326
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Posted February 11th, 2006 17:00
Actually correct that, I just tried to play the entire disc that I was talking about that had the funny mark in the middle of it and it kept freezing up. I will let you know if I get bad ones with the other brand of discs. What else could this be since the new drive is doing the same thing?1326
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Posted February 11th, 2006 19:00
Ok, yeah this mark is within the burn area, and its just a spot that looks like it wasnt burned on (its the same color as the disc before it was burned). But what is strange is it just does it on this brand of disc, and it did it with the new burner (Philips 8701) and the old one (Philips 8631).139
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Posted February 11th, 2006 19:00
So I have been playing around here, burning the same disc to different media. I opened a new package of Sony DVDs that I have and tried to burn on that. First of all, it didnt make that same mark that it had previously made on the other discs from the old package of Sonys. However, it put scratches in it! So I tried another disc, and it made the mark plus it put scratches! Is this definitely a hardware issue before I write dell back and they send me another one? Am I going to keep getting defective refurbished drives from them?
osprey4
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Posted January 28th, 2006 10:00