Judging by the very large percentage of 1-star reviews on amazon, mostly for units that died shortly after the warranty expired (or even sooner), there is a apparently a SERIOUS reliability problem with these.
Mine has died (it doesn't show any errors in Device Manager but was getting burn errors on EVERY burn).
I upgraded the fw from 1.10 to 1.11 tonight to see if that might help.
Now the yellow light just flashes forever when I insert blank media.
When I start Nero and try to burn, it says 'waiting for drive to become ready',
I tried TDK DVD+R and Fuji (TY) DVD+R with the same result.
Just to rule out most other issues (Nero, OS, driver or software conflicts etc.), I tried the one of these blanks in my Pioneer. I was able to burn the same data successfully on the first attempt with the DVR-111D.
I had barely used the PX-716A.
Luckily I have a Pioneer DVR-111D.
I am planning on buying a DVR-115D as a backup.
I guess there is no point complaining to Plextor for an out of warranty unit, even if there is a known reliability issue with this model?
I would contact the AG considering that fully 50% of the amazon reviews for this drive are 1 out of 5 stars, but quite frankly it isn't worth my time or effort.
Thankfully I got both of my PX-716A drives (the other one is on another desktop PC that I haven't used in ages) on sale at Best Buy when they had a nice price and a rebate - paid about $40 each after rebate at the time.
I may also just swap the broken PX-716A out for my 2nd PX-716A since I hardly use that other PC anyway.
I noticed that at least two other members had issues with theirs.
Anyone else whose PX-716A died after a low number of burns?