sony burner prob.

[alondra]

it has been working fine till now, sudenly I keep geting msg can't continue, insert recordable or blank disk. I have three diferent brands of disk, I rotate them thru and once in a while it will accept one that it had rejected, no answer in the trouble shooting program.

[Bovon]

This happens when the laser is either going weak or 'sometimes' dirty. Most times, it is a weak and dying laser. Sence you have already tried several different disks, this seems to be the best answer. Some of the cheaper made disks are hard to burn...takes a heavier laser power. The power of the laser needed to burn a disk is determined when you first setup to burn one. It goes thru the calibrating process by burning a small area on the disk specifically setup to do this. If the laser cannot come up to the power needed to burn the disk, you will get a failure, but most times the error returned will be something like calibration failed, or disk full...something on this order. I went thru that a couple of years ago, but have forgotten exactly what the error statement was.

Two things to try. 1) get a very good brand of disk and retry. 2) get a laser cleaner disk and try cleaning the lens. Be carefull here, and get only a cleaner disk with the very fine bristle brush. There are some that have a stiff plastic brush that can hit the laser lens and knock it off center. It is held inplace by small, weak springs, and 1 mm out of line, and its a gonner. When a disk is in the tray, and the drawer closed, there is about 2 +/- mm clearance between the laser lens and the disk

[DVNT1]

Bovon, that's some good information to know. Do you have a link to more of that type of information? I would like to read more about it.

[Bovon]

DVNT1

Around two years ago, I bought a 'new' OEM Philips 4X4X24 burner from a seller on eBay. At the time, I had never used a burner, and didn't know where to start. The burner came without software, so after searching some burner forums, I bought some software. The burner would read, but everytime I tried to burn a disk, it came back with calibration errors. Finally, at the forum, some guys had me do certain things, and it was confirmed it was dead as far as burning was concerned. I tried to return it to the vendor, but was unsuccessfull, so..being an electrical and mechanical type, I decided to see if I could fix it. I didn't, but in my travels thru the net, I did find a tremendus amount of laser technology as well as cd rom disk data. I may have retained some of the links to where I did a lot of reading, and I will search back thru my favorites and see what I can find. It was an educational trip, and I learned a great deal. Cd rom disks are certainly not all the same...there is different types of compositions that are placed on the disk, and then coated with lacquer. The 'gold' finish that you see so highly advertised?...lacquer finish!...a gimmick. I will see what I can find and post the links back here, perhaps by tomorrow...so many of the sites I found, were from linking from other pages, so it could take some searching to refind some of those...

[Bovon]

Ok, I took a quick tour thru my favorites folder, and found a few sites I visited while searching for answers a couple of years ago.

The link to cdrfaq.org may be the main site where I found a lot of good data, and other links.

I'll look more tomorrow..
http://newlife-win98.server101.com/cd_burning_info.htm
http://www.cdmediaworld.com/hardware/cdrom/cd.shtml
http://www.cdmediaworld.com/hardware/cdrom/cd_cdr_info.shtml
(Same link as above, but a shot to the right area to begin with.)
http://www.honiton5.freeserve.co.uk/
http://www.cdrom-guide.com/cgi/Ultimate.cgi
(A forum for CD Roms, drives and software)
http://www.cdrfaq.org/
(More info than you really wanted to know)
http://www.lnkworld.com/

[alondra]

My burner is fairly new has only made maybe a dozen disks. just made a full music CD. OK. just kept puting in disks till it accepted one, the fifth. will try the rejected ones on data. .am puting cassetes on CD. still learning. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

[Bovon]

alondra

If your Sony is still under warranty, I strongly suggest that you contact Sony and tell them what is happening. I also have a fairly new Sony, and have used some of the cheapest bulk eBay disks that are made. I have NEVER had a problem burning even one disk. As stated above, I have done my homework, and understand the makeup of cd rom disks pretty good. Some simply are manufactured with the cheapest materials available. This is due to the very low market for bulk disks. Every manufacturer is cutting costs as much as possible to compete. I read recently where quality control has gone to pot in many factories, and the price of disks are gonna go up in the near future as ppl will be demanding better disks.

A good burner should have no problems with burning even the el cheapo disks if the laser power is available, Advise Sony of your problems, just in case your burner is loosing laser power prematurely.

One set of tips while burning which may help you a lot.

1. Defrag your hard drive often..I run Norton Speed disk before each burn.

2. Close all applications running in the back ground. ( Ctrl-Alt-Del, and end task on everything except Explorer and Systray.)

3. Have enough physical ram in your machine. With Win98, 128 mb minumum.

4. Set your burn speed low to begin with. Many disks will not burn at the higher speeds, even when they say they will burn at 12X, they will not everytime. I rarely burn at over 4X.

[alondra]

bovon thanks for the input, am finding that a burner is a whole new world http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif one point you made, when the burner trys out a disk it burns a calib. if it fails, wonder if this could make that disk never again useable, sort of like trying to add to a disk with some thing already on it. will contact sony as you suggested.

[OuTpaTienT]

I too have a Sony burner (8x/4x/32x w/burn-proof tech). So far I have been able to burn anything to any of the discs I've purchased. The only coasters I've made have been completely of my own doing, ya know, learning...trial & error. When I use it corrrectly the hardware performs perfectly. A couple of tips I don't think I've seen mentioned yet are:

- Make sure "auto-insert notification" is turned <u><FONT size="3"> OFF </FONT s></u>

- Use the Sony software that came with the drive...at least until you're comfortable with the whole process. I actually like the Sony Extreme CD software and use it quite often even though I have plenty of other burning software.

- also, if you have discs that you started to burn then aborted or you think the process just failed or maybe never even started...whatever the case, if it's not a fresh disc then set it aside in a "maybe good/maybe bad" pile. You can mess with those disc after you're a little more confident of the whole process.

So far, the one sure fire way I've found to identify the status of a disc (blank or already written to or whatever) is to fire up the Sony CD Extreme software and goto DRIVE in the menu, and then Disc Explorer & Drive Properties. This will examine the disc and tell you what, if anything, is there. (To refresh just double-click on the CD picture.)

I've had other software, and even Windoze Explorer itself sometimes not correctly refresh the CD drive and therefore mis-identify the contents. The Sony software has never failed at that.

[Bovon]

By alondra
.....wonder if this could make that disk never again useable, sort of like trying to add to a disk with some thing already on it.

When a burner starts to do a burn, it always goes thru the calibration process. This is a special area in the center of the disk, with ample tracks for several attemps at calibration. You probably could retry the calibration of a disk quite a few times, before the tracks are used up. It only takes a very short area of the track to set the burner up and ascertain the power needed to burn that disk.

Only after a burn has been completed, and the data is closed, renders a disk unusable for further burning, assuming the disk is not full.

Some burner software, like Direct CD (and I believe Sony soft as well) allows you to drag and drop files and/or complete folders onto a disk. You do not have to close this session out, and later on..you can add more files to the disk until the disk is full. The problem here is, older cd rom readers can't read the disk til its closed. There is an application that corrects this for a few older cd rom readers, but not the oldest ones. I can't recall the file name, but I think I found it at Adaptec burner website.

You can even delete a file or folder from a CD-R disk using the drag and drop or copy method until the disk is closed out, but I don't know if this burned area is reusable or not, but I doubt it because once the media on the disk has been burned, it wouldn't just dissapear and be like new again, unlike a floppy disk or hard drive, where the media is a magnetic substance, and can be restored magnectically to an unused condition. The media on a CD-R disk is a coat of something (I forget the name of the stuff) that once burned cannot be returned to a new state, because the dots burned into the media cannot be refilled and set for new burn-dots to be burned in.

One small note here. When I mentioned that a floppy disk or a hard drive can be restored to a new condition, is a little misleading for the purest. Once data is placed on a floppy or hard disk, it can be reformatted and reused. The old data still exists to some degree, and can be recovered if necessary. This is very costly, and probably only the FBI really uses it, LOL... Hard disks that are used by hospitals or business and afterwards resold as used equipment use a program that put an alternating series of ones and zeros on the disk from beginning to end. From what I have read, this precludes any data from being recovered...but, I don't trust this, and I'm sure the technology exists where the FBI could still obtain the original data if needed...