Faulty DVD burner - go figure!

CVM wrote on 8/13/2007, 11:37 AM

Well, it happened. My DVD burner that came preinstalled on my 3 year old Dell Dual Core system died. For weeks, I've been getting spotty results on my burns... blank disks not being recognized, burns not working (both in DVDA and Nero). I thought it was my TY disks and decided to buy another stack of a different brand (e.g. Verbatim).

But, while in Wal Mart (here in the good ole' USA - New York), I saw a Sony 18x DVD burner.... multi-format and DL compatible... for $47 on sale. It was the same cost as the blank DVD stack. I figured, why not give this a whirl?

I installed the internal drive (it came with a black or tan bezel... nice). It went in perfectly in about five minutes... was autorecognized (no driver needed), and I burned two flawless TY disks at top speed. Very nice! So, I can be rest assured, my problems with this are over and my TY disks are perfect!

Comments

JJKizak wrote on 8/13/2007, 1:57 PM

They just don't make DVD burners like they used to. A Western Electric burner would morph into a spare burner during the burn so you would not loose the disc. It would also repair itself. Oh sorry, I forgot that American manufacturing moved to Mexico, Taiwan, Malaysia, & China and Japan.
JJK

Laurence wrote on 8/13/2007, 7:18 PM

I would still stick to 4x burns for your video DVDs though. Ty Yuden's are as good as you get, but I notice that after a year or so of storage, slower burned discs hold up noticably better.

CVM wrote on 8/14/2007, 2:02 PM

What do you mean, Laurence... "I notice that after a year or so of storage, slower burned discs hold up noticably better."

Don't DVDs last forever with proper care, storage, and handling?

Chienworks wrote on 8/14/2007, 7:26 PM

Ha! Nothing lasts forever. Even archival gold discs kept hermetically sealed are only rated for 100 years or so. I've seen lots of estimates that the current crop of optical media will probably only last 10 to 30 years even with proper care.