Faulty spindle (again?)

[QQ]

Seems I'm not really lucky with buying media.

First of all there was this Verbatim DLP 50cd spindle which would have those C1 error spikes in the mid of cd. Now I bought a spindle of MoserBaer cds, which I thought was fine (low C1, no C2, fast burning, strong protection layer), up till yesterday.

Yesterday I burned cd, and it didn't work. It would just stop at one file, and give me CRC error. Other files were working fine. I freaked out, and burned another copy.. this time checked box near "Verify written data" in Nero. Well, it burned fine, went throught data verification, and at 93% it failed. CD would just slow down, and inaccesible files would appear. Just for sake of curiosity I burned one more cd, and same happened, again soemwhere in the end of cd.

I was scared - is it my burner? Then I remembered I still have few of those Verbatims lying around - took those, burned 3 or 4 in a row - and everything was fine.

Hmm I thought. I took MB's again, and burned this time at 40x. Data verification passed, though KProbe showed some C2s, again at the end of cd.

Funny thing, I had about 20 cds burned from the top of that MB spindle fine - no errors. And now this happened. So I thought to myself, let's try some from the bottom. And few worked. Then few didn't. As of now I have 10 broken cds lying around.. all with errors at the end of them.

So I'm thinking to myself.. CD burning is still risky buisness.. It's still far from 2.5min per CD - since you allways have to run Data Verification process.. I mean, come on, even CDs from same spindle can be faulty.

I'm annoyed.

[UALOneKPlus]

How old is your CD burner? Have you updated its firmware?

Sometimes old CD burners don't like new media too well. It could be a combination of CD-R media going bad, and the CD Burner aging...

[QQ]

It's few months old LTR-48246K with latest firmware.

[UALOneKPlus]

It's few months old LTR-48246K with latest firmware.

That's interesting. My LTR-48246K sometimes chokes on some media as well, although I've never tried the Verbatim or other brand you spoke of.

It mostly choked on cheap Imation CD-R's, but works great on most other media...

[QQ]

Well it burned 100+ CDs fine before, including Verbatim and MB. So I'm still hoping it's bad media, and not bad burner.

[QQ]

ok, so I bought another spindle of Verbatims, and got those spikes of C1's again

So I went to the shop I bought my Lite-On, and gave it back (warranty), explaining what's going on. Well, they took it and said they'll look at it, but I also was told that I'm not supposed to burn at 48x speeds even if media is 48x - while I clearly objected to that, I'm afraid that's what I'll be told tomorrow when I go to take it back.

So I'm asking - does this make any sense? Is he right saying I shouldn't be burning at 48x? I'm pretty sure he isn't, but hey, who knows..

[rdgrimes]

The Verbatim 48x media has widely varying quality. It rarely burns well at 48x on my LiteOns. If you limit the speed to an appropriate rate based on your own tests, it's pretty reliable stuff. I've tested both the Mexico and the Taiwan media, neither was adequate at 48x.