need help burning w/ DVD drives.. not working correctly!

[billdotson]

I have 3 DVD burners.

In the Windows device manager there are as follows:

_NEC DVD+RW ND-2100AD

HL-DT-ST- DVD-RAM GSA-H22N

LITE-ON DVDRW SH-16A7S


I cannot choose a different write speed for DVDs other than 4x. With the LG I can only choose 4X but with the others I can do either 4X or 2.4X. The NEC one is OEM that came in my old Dell and the other two are OEM that I got from Newegg.com. I am assuming this is because my DVD+RWs I bought are 1X-4X only (I just looked at the spindle and realized this). They are Sony DVD+RWs and I am almost certain that all my drives support +RW.

Anyway, when I tried buring some stuff to one of them with my LG drive halfway through I got a "seek, sync, ATIP, or mechanical positioning error" message. Then after that I burned 3 DVDs in the same drive and they all finished. Then I put another one in and got the same message. I assumed these DVDs were bad for a moment and then I tried the DVD in my LITE-ON SATA drive. It burned it fine. The other DVD that did not burn correctly when in the LG burner I stuck in the NEC burner and started it and it burned it fine.

Is my LG burner out of date and needs a firmware update or is the drive bad/going bad? It seems odd that it would fail to burn one DVD, then burn 3 successfully (as far as I know) and then fail again. If it were going bad I would expect it to fail most of the time. What is going on?! ARG.

I am guessing that there isn't anythng wrong with my other drives in terms of firmware but just in case....

Here is the info for the LITE-ON SATA drive from newegg:

LITE-ON 16X DVD±R DVD Burner Black SATA Model SH-16A7S-05 - OEM
Item #: N82E16827106047

Here is the info for the LG drive from newegg:

LG 18X DVD±R Super-Multi DVD Burner With 12X DVD-RAM Write Black IDE Model GSAH22N-BK - OEM
Item #: N82E16827136103

I have gone to LG's main site and I have also gone to Lite-On's main site. Firmware updates for these models are conveniently absent.. grrr.

I have also looked for firmware for the NEC drive but that model doesn't even seem to be a model on their site at all.

[tbroderick]

Are you using GNU/Linx or Windows when burning?

[futz]

I cannot choose a different write speed for DVDs other than 4x.
The software and drives sense the blank media you've put in them and present you with a list of possible burn speeds. If you haven't put a blank in yet, do so before choosing your burn speed. If you have, it may be that your burner thinks the blank isn't good enough to burn faster than 4x.

[billdotson]

I cannot choose a different write speed for DVDs other than 4x. With the LG I can only choose 4X but with the others I can do either 4X or 2.4X. The NEC one is OEM that came in my old Dell and the other two are OEM that I got from Newegg.com. I am assumng this is because my DVD+RWs I bought are 1X-4X only (I just looked at the spindle and realized this). They are Sony DVD+RWs and I am almost certain that all my drives support +RW.

Anyway, when I tried buring some stuff to one of them with my LG drive halfway through I got a "seek, sync, ATIP, or mechanical positioning error" message. Then after that I burned 3 DVDs in the same drive and they all finished. Then I put another one in and got the same message. I assumed these DVDs were bad for a moment and then I tried the DVD in my LITE-ON SATA drive. It burned it fine. The other DVD that did not burn correctly when in the LG burner I stuck in the NEC burner and started it and it burned it fine.

Above I said that the DVD+RWs I have are 1X-4X.. so they won't go above 4X.. I just saw the tiny little words on the container that said 1X-4X.. but the main issue is the "seek, sync, ATIP, or mechanical positioning error" message I got on 2 out of 5 attempted burns w/ my LG burner. The 2 ones that failed I tried in another burner.. one of them in the Lite-On SATA drive and the other in the NEC drive and those discs got burned to correctly. The same discs that got the "seek, sync, ATIP, or mechanical positioning error" message w/ the LG burner. The issue is that the LG burner gave me the "seek, sync, ATIP, or mechanical positioning error" message on 2 out of 5 DVDs.

[Eternal_Nyt]

Check Your Firmware on Your Drives. I have a NU DDW-81 and had to update Firmware to a -82 To Burn DVD's and did an install on a Windws system to get Firmware Updates. And depending on you DVD Drive and Can Be piky on what Disc's to use for burning. Like i know What I can't use on my System. Maxell DVD-R
But can Use Memorex DVD+RW with out any issuies.

But Look into Firmware and Does have a big Part on how it Communicates to Linux.