Beware: ESystor.com

dand9959 wrote on 12/13/2005, 1:41 AM
I purchased a 5-stack duplicator from Esystor.com last January. 5 new 109 burners plus a 109 source drive.

I was flying, duplicating discs at 8-16x discs five at a time. No problems!

Until this month. First one burner quit working. (It would recognize a disc, but not burn it.). Then another.

Then the source drive quite reading discs.

So now I have hobbled 3-stack where the only way I can copy a source disc is to load the source onto the onboard disc (40G) via one of the remaining slave drives.

I haven't contacted the CA-based ESystor yet - I've been too busy trying to deliver Christmas product. (Note the time on this msg, fer crying out loud.) But they'll hear from me.

Comments

farss wrote on 12/13/2005, 2:34 AM
I've had much the same thing happen although with a completely different brand. At first I thought it was because I'd been forced into using 8x media, local support guy thought I might need a firmware upgrade and emailed it to me. Things got a little better before they got really bad.
So I ran few of the internal diganostics, they reported the HDD was faulty, contacted support guy again who said any 40Gb drive would do, so fitted new HDD and all is well.
Might be worth doing some diagnostics on your own. My 109s in this unit looked faulty but they weren't the problem.
Bob.
dand9959 wrote on 12/14/2005, 8:13 AM
Thanks for the info, Bob. I'll do some checking after the "crunch"...btw, I'm down to 2 burners now...another stopped working last night. I feel like I'm in a bizarre movie climax, racing to reach the goal as my life-saving resource dramatically ebbs away...will I make it? Stay tuned!

Did your stack's HDD have any system sw on it that you had to move or reinstall? How did you accomplish the HDD swap?
gdstaples wrote on 12/14/2005, 11:14 AM
Sounds like a power supply either went bad or is going bad. You might try a new power supply in the box or pull the burners and see if they work with another PS in computer.
dand9959 wrote on 12/14/2005, 11:23 AM
I'll try that, too.

The nature of the failure is exacty the same for each burner....

On any of the drives that stopped working, they always stop at 12-20% into a burn, leaving the disc partially burned. (the burned band on the disc is always the same width.) After this failure, the drive will no longer burn.

This further indicates a systemic problem, as 5 burners randomly going bad would probably not exhibit the exact same symptoms in the failed burn process.
farss wrote on 12/15/2005, 1:29 AM
On my Evocept tower all the software is in flash memory.
Replacing the HDD was as simple as removing the drive bay, unscrewing and unplugging the old drive and fitting the new one.
Then from the control panel format the disk which only took minutes and I was right to go.
Bob.
P.S. Can't understand the logic of making a duplicator where one of the drives is only a reader, mine has three burners, anyone of which can be used to read.