Re: Fatal error while burning CD

["Thomas Schmitt" <scdbackup@gmx.net>]

Hi,

Michael Lange wrote:
> If someone here can report about experience (good or bad) with specific
> make and models (still not sure whether the next drive will be a DVD- or
> BD-writer), it would be welcome...

In general i'd buy any brand of full height drives.
I currently run 3 LGs, 2 ASUS, 1 Samsung, 1 Optiarc, 1 PIONEER.

It's more a matter of the individual drive than of the manufacturer or
model. Not so good during the last 5 years were:
- The flaky new DVD burner which i had to send back was a LITEON
  iHAS124F. But i know of other iHASen which work well.
- An LG GH24NSC0 became unreliable after only two years.
  The LITEON was planned as replacement. In the end the job went to a
  ASUS DRW-24D5MT.
(Both did cost about 15 EUR. So any testing at the factory would eat up
the manufacturer's profit.)

I always refrained from slim drives. User reports suggest that they are
a bit less reliable. But your mileage may vary ...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
A little warning about PIONEER BDR-S09 might be appropriate:

Mine reads BD-RW with such a high (and not adjustable) speed and has such
a strong grip on the medium, that two newer "Verbatim" BD-RW media
developed a radial crack from the inner hole towards the writable area.
With one of the media the crack reached the writable area and made the
medium unreadable.
This happened during stress tests after about 10 times of reading. The
media bear the manufacturer id "CMCMAG/CN2/0". Older Verbatim BD-RW
(VERBAT/IM0/0) or those from "Intenso", "Primeon" and "Maxcell"
(all RITEK/BW1/1) did not suffer such a damage in 20 read runs at about
10x BD speed.
The drive itself survived the intensive testing without problems.

I addressed the PIONEER BDR-S09's unwillingness to read with slower speed
by special parameters of xorriso command -read_speed, which curb the drive
speed by simply not taking more data per second than the desired speed
would deliver. I.e. xorriso waits with new READ(10) commands until enough
time has eleapsed since the last one. This causes the drive to make less
noise and to let the "CMCMAG/CN2/0" media survive 20 read runs without
visible damage:

  xorriso -for_backup -indev /dev/sr1 \
          -read_speed soft_force:4xBD \
          -check_media --

(The Linux kernel offers no such curb mechanism, i fear.)

In general i only feed the PIONEER with the RITEKs of which i have enough.
I now refrain from buying new "Verbatim" BD-RW, although it might be that
their plastic body became more sturdy meanwhile.


Have a nice day :)

Thomas