Considering how cheap new burners are, it's probably not worth the hassle to try and recover the drive.

We recently picked up 4 LG GSA-4163 drives (cdrinfo editors choice); been pleased so far, especially like the fact that they let me set the booktype on +R SL and +R DL media. We've been doing some tests with customers who have returned -R media as it wouldn't play on their machine - though it played fine on ours - so far in all cases the replacement +R with DVD-ROM booktype has played when the -R wouldn't.

With the 4 burners in a single tower and using Nero's multi-burner and booktype setting, we can burn pretty darn quick. Turned a rush job of 50 DVD's around very quickly.

--Scott

Considering how cheap new burners are, it's probably not worth the hassle to try and recover the drive.

My conclusion as well, Scott, so I just purchased the Pioneer A09 to replace the A05. Should be here tomorrow.

My A05 was a good drive for over two years, and it still burns DVD-R, but I don't feel I can trust it even for that, given its newly-developed flakiness with DVD-RW.

Dang! My A05 is just over 2 years old too. I have never purposely erased an RW disc in advance, I usually just let DVDA do it automatically and it has always seemed to work. I normally just use Maxell DVD-RW discs. I don't know if those are really better, just going by what I've heard. Hope this is not a sign of what's to come.
One thing I should point out, FWIW, is my A05 will not record a Ridata G04 any slower than 4X, no matter what I set the speed to. So in light of the information that I read here somewhere, just a day or two ago, If the A09 records at 8 or 16X, it may not slow down to the speed you want unless the discs you buy refuse to record higher than a certain speed. Maybe that problem's only on my recorder (since I haven't seen anybody else with that complaint), but it may be food for thought.

My A05 is around 2 years too so far no issues with RW disks. The only ones I have won't burn any faster than 1x anyway. I burn my backup images to them of my PC once a month. I have been using the same disks for the better part of a 1.5 years. 2 Sony -R and one Verbatim -R R/W for that long. I had voltage errors on some Ritek disks usig Nero 5 to burn them or DVDlab standard to do the burn but so far Adobe Encore 1.5.1 does the burns to the Riteks just fine.

I got a Pioneer A05 drive as a Christmas gift. If I had my personal choice I would have spent an extra $30 bucks on a Plextor. Plextor drives are the best burners.....Period. I have 10 Plextor CD burners and have burned many reliable discs. By comparison, I have burned a CD in my Pioneer drive, and find many players have difficulties reading the disc. Using the same project, and same source media files I can burn the same CD on my Plextor drives and get much better results putting that disc in the same players that gave the Pioneer burned discs playback errors.

Well, that is interesting. Everywhere (all forums) I've looked, almost everyone usually agrees that the Pioneers are still best (DVD Burners). Nevertheless, I only ended up with mine by accident.
I've never had anybody say any CD I've made on my A05 doesn't work. (But I don't make tons of CDs, still not a single complaint from anybody) I have heard good reports about Plextor CD recorders, but really don't know that much about their DVD recorders.

I agree with JJKizak,
I have lots of problems with RW discs not erasing properly or having a limited useful life. They are really unreliable.
I have a Pioneer 104 and a 105. I don't think it is the drives.
I don't think it would burn the DVD-Rs if it weren't working properly. DVD-RWs are crap.
John

By the way, the Pioneer 109s have mixed reviews. The NEC ND-3520A seems to have better reviews and is cheaper too.

johnmeyer, did you get an extended warenty when you bought your DVD burner? I bought an HP burner ~2 years ago & it does 4 months ago. I spent the estra $15 on the Circuit City warrenty & called them to handle it instead of HP. After one quick test they told me it's dead & they will send me a replacement, free of charge, and I will ship my dead one back to them, At their expence.

Well, ends up they called while I was at work that same night. They couldn't get any new ones, so they instead mailed me a curcit city gift card for the FULL PRICE I paid for it two years ago! :D

So, I'm asking because if you got the warrenty, give them a call & see what they can do.

Thanks for all the replies.

mixed reviews I take the reviews at the videohelp site with a small grain of salt. They can be very useful, but a lot of the people posting there are often trying to get great results from cheap media, and then blame the drive when things don't work out. That is certainly the case for many of the A09 reviews I read.

did you get warranty? I don't believe in these, although it sounds like it worked out for you. Generally no one actually fixes things (except me -- the curse of having an EE degree), and often the "exchange" you are offered when the item fails is for something you don't really want.

I found quite a bit of information on other pages about this exact same problem. Lots of other people have had the problem. A few people in some of these posts on these other sites make silly comments about DVD-RW being a lousy medium, etc., but most, like me, have used DVD-RW extensively when all of a sudden the erase process (even when done as an integral part of the burn), causes the media ID to get hosed and then the media is no good. This is not a media problem. It is either a drive failure problem, a power supply (in the computer) problem, a dirty lens, or something similar. I generally erase and then burn at least 1-2 DVD-RW discs each day as part of testing the results before buring DVD-R discs. Therefore I know DVD-RW can work well. I was hoping to find the cause of the problem in case it is not the drive, but I've bought the drive, and hopefully it will arrive within 24 hours, and then I'll know.

Here's the link to an extensive post about the problem: 105 corrupting DVD-RW media.

After I read this, I looked at the media ID on the various DVD-RW disks that had become problematic, and sure enough, the media ID was gone, and the disk was being reported as "not eraseable."

John,
Might the following have something to do with it? From the Pioneer website:

"The other Pioneer DVD/CD writers
DVR-A03/DVR-A04/DVR-104/DVR-A05/DVR-105/DVR-SK12D/DVR-A06/DVR-106D/DVR-S606/DVR-A06/DVR-106D/DVR-S606
Above writers are unable to write/re-write/record/re-record on the 6X-speed DVD-RW media."

"››The other Pioneer DVD/CD writers
DVR-A03/DVR-A04/DVR-104/DVR-A05/DVR-105/DVR-SK12D/DVR-A06/DVR-106D/DVR-S606/DVR-A06/DVR-106D/DVR-S606
Above writers are unable to write/re-write/record/re-record on the 4X-speed DVD-RW media."
=============================
It gets even better:

"// Important Notice
It is revealed that following Pioneer DVD/CD writers(DVR-A03/DVR-A04 and DVR-104) are implied to cause possible hardware and/or media damage when they write/record on 8X-speed DVD-R or 4X-speed DVD-R or 6X-speed DVD-RW or 4X-speed DVD-RW or 2X-speed DVD-RW media in combination with following firmware version*1.
*1 DVR-A03: Ver1.80 and/or previous firmware
DVR-A04/DVR-104: Ver1.20 and/or previous firmware
If your drive is in the case, please download updated firmware from a Pioneer firmware Download page."

Here is the page I took this from.

John

"I've looked, almost everyone usually agrees that the Pioneers are still best (DVD Burners)."

Shows you how much the general consensus can be wrong after reading craftech's post huh? I've been through enough burner growing pains in the past, and I know when I have a burner that's flakey and unreliable. Hear me now, believe me later....Plextor.