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I started getting problems whith mi Lite On LTR-48125W about a week ago. I have used it for 2 months. Until now, it worked flawlessly, no read slow downs or errors when burning. But now, the drive is slowing down at every disk I put in it. It takes a lot to read an entire disk due to this slowdowns. The same disk read without problems on my creative DVD drive. I used Nero CD speed, and when the slowdowns happen, it almost always mark it as an unreadable sector, but I have to admit that sometimes the drives takes it time but is able to read the sector, eg. when coping a file to the hard drive. On the other hand, sometimes not, eg. when installing a game copy from cd. Also, it began burning coasters.
So, as I didn't know that was going on, I searched the net an found this forum. I also found that some other people are having the same problem.
That makes me think... are this drives bad manufactured?. What's going on?. How so many people with the same problem?.
Perhaps some electronic or mechanical faiulure appears in these drives after some time of use. Bad Quality Control?. That would explain good functioning when first used.
I am using windows 98, so windows xp is not the factor here. It is clearly the drives. So I think I will return it and get a Sony or Aopen drive instead. It's a pitty because the drive was working great until now.

Any comments would be aprecciated.

If you don't like LiteOn, don't get a Sony. Sony drives are made by LiteOn.

cfitz

Oh, I didn't knew that... so what, an Aopen drive then?

Many people are quite happy with their LiteOn drives. If you want something else, Plextor and Yamaha are relatively expensive drives with a reputation for good quality. LG, Mitsumi, Samsung, etc. are also liked by many. I would avoid Benq/Acer. Read the many reviews here and decide for yourself.

http://www.cdrlabs.com/reviews/

cfitz

Teac drives are better drives for fiability but does not handle any protection . They costs more than Lite-On drives but less than Yamaha ( which has not a perfect fiability ) and Plextor ( fiability and very good sav ) .
Teac CDRW drives are very good readers ( perhaps you have used your burner as your main cd-rom drive ) .
Actually Mitsumi sells Lite-On drives . I think Samsung and LG produce their drives but i don t know what it worth .
Most of the companies are selling drives produced by Lite-On and Benq .
And Benq/Acer drives are the worse drives ( ALI is owned by Benq ... ) .

Lite-On drives are very good drives . But it is possible that they do not fulfill your needs .

vbl117 wrote:Actually Mitsumi sells Lite-On drives .

Not unless they just began doing so. All the Mitsumi drives that Ian has reviewed use the Oak Technology chipset, so they can't be LiteOn (which uses MediaTek chipsets).

cfitz

-A-,

Lite-on sells more drives than any other manufacturer, and their overall quality is generally very good.

Any drive can go bad, even the most expensive. Burners are very complex devices and it happens. The Lite-on has a one year warranty so you can replace it under warranty.

In Europe the Lite-On warranty is two years; more than most people need!

The drive has good specs, it fulfills my requirements, but the problem is that it is not working as it should. And when I saw here people with the same problems, I begin thinking I made a bad purchase. But there are a lot of good reviews out there, and people happy with their drives. So I will give it another chance. I will try to exchange it for the new model the 52x24x52, the same one if not possible, and let's see what happens. If it doesn't fails in 6 months perhaps mine was a defective unit. If not... I will surely buy another brand.

-A-, It could be media quality. What do you use?

Is DMA still enabled for your LiteON? and HD?

What are you burning that causes you problems?

vbl117 wrote:
Actually Mitsumi sells Lite-On drives .

Not unless they just began doing so. All the Mitsumi drives that Ian has reviewed use the Oak Technology chipset, so they can't be LiteOn (which uses MediaTek chipsets).

You are right , i ve made a big mistake !!!

My PC configuration is exactly the same before the problems arised. My hard drives are working in UDMA-5 transfer mode and the Lite-On drive is working in UDMA-2 transfer mode, according to application accelerator device information. I have always used Sony media, I don't like burning valuable data in cd-r's that will fail. I have always trusted Sony quality and they have never failed me.
The drive is slowing down or simply does not read disks that I burned in another recorder (a yamaha 4x) a few weeks ago, and that worked without problems on other readers.
And whith burned cd-r's in the lite on drive, the drive sometimes reads them, sometimes it slows down at some points, and sometimes it simply can't read them, specially when installing a game copy for example (perhpas because the game installer doesn't wait too much before it gives an instalation error).
I installed the last firmware available (v8, it had v2), but it didn't help.
As someone said before, the drive is probably a bad unit.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that when the installation program of some CD fails to read the CD, generally the drive stops working and "disappears" from my system, I have to reboot to be able to read disks again.

-A- wrote:I have always used Sony media, I don't like burning valuable data in cd-r's that will fail. I have always trusted Sony quality and they have never failed me.

Sony media is no very good for the 48x LiteOns, I like this media also, but since LiteOn release the CAV firmwares this media had problems, Now I got a 52x LiteOn but I need to buy some of this media and test it mean while I recomend you the Verbatim/Mitsubishi 48x media that are very good with 48x and 52x LiteOns.