CDRLabs.com

It might be my setup, but my 52x Litey has been given me problems with CDRW's in DirectCD 2.0, InCD 3.38 [OEM] and some newer version I can't remember.

I still have to try a few other RW's, but using 650mb 4x Kodaks and 10x Verbatim DataLifePlus sometimes gives me unreadable media causing me to reformat.

I've used various ASPI drivers which didn't help and caused me problems so I reformatted.

Anyone else experiencing bad writes/reads and unreadable CDRW's with their 52x LiteON? I just want to "take the pulse" of the RW capability of this burner with various owners.

Nothing yet here.

I'm running InCD 3.51.91 and format my RW discs to Mt. Rainier.

I've never tired Direct CD since I got the drive.

Are you getting similar errors without using InCD & Direct CD? (IE: using the cd-rw disc as a cd-r in Nero)

PS: Win98SE, Adaptec ASPI 4.71.1. 52x Burner is slave on primary IDE channel.

Nero sometimes gives bad writes to CDRW's. But if I reformat, it usually writes with no problems.

Before anyone asks, I'm not using InCD and DCD at the same time.

Funny as I've never had DCD problems on my 24/10/40 rebadged LiteON.

My system is Win98SE, 52x on secondary master.

Maybe I have a bum drive.

DirectCD 2.0 is ancient.
i'd be surprised if it supports your drive...
why don't you upgrade?

Action Jackson wrote:Before anyone asks, I'm not using InCD and DCD at the same time.

yes, but do you have both installed on the same system? if so, that is not a good thing, usually causes problems, instabilities etc.

DCD and InCD are not installed simultaneously.

I might upgrade to a newer DCD if InCD continues to give me these frustrating problems.

That or buy some recovery software.

Action Jackson:

Your results for two media brands only needn't suffice for general conclusions. Hopefully the next "Match more media" firmware update could change the picture. In the meantime, for some LTR-48125W testing you could look at

http://www.cdrinfo.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=8186

http://www.cdrinfo.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=8068

http://www.cdrinfo.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=7825

Are you using InCD for both CD-RW and CD-MRW (Mt. Rainier)?

Could you describe what "unreadable media" meant for InCD? Were they mounted by InCD upon disc insertion? Did you try running CD Speed ScanDisc on them?

In general, if an InCD formatted disc fails, I would recommend to use Nero Full Erase before formatting it again. Several users reported using SuperBlank, with varying degrees of success (I've never used it).

I presume you removed DCD before installing InCD, but did you check your IOSUBSYS directory for DCD left-overs? Well, unless your OS is clean, you could also have other Adaptec/Roxio drivers that conflict with InCD.

It would be best to start with a fresh installation of 98SE, followed by the latest InCD 3.51.91; otherwise, you could ask CCampbell for the Nero Clean Tool mentioned in

http://www.cdrlabs.com/phpBB/viewtopic. ... 4&start=50

KCK,

Thanx for your thorough response. I also looked at LiteON's own forums and there were a few posts about InCD problems but obscure [not much info posted].

To answer some of your questions:

I am dealing with a fresh reformat with the ancient Win98SE ASPI drivers b/c all the other ASPI updates [i.e. for Feurio!, Nero, Adaptec] gave me errors in burning and readability for media.

The InCD version I have is OEM and it is Mt. Rainier. I have never used a previous version of InCD.

I let InCD format the RW and write to it, and if need be, reformat. If I cannot reformat in InCD, I let Nero do a full format. I only let InCD eject the disc.

Unreadable is a poor choice of words on my part although it has happened before where the disc is unreadable [drive spins and spins but doesn't seem to be able to find data]. It's more like some data is unrecoverable. What happens when I insert a InCD RW is that either my burner or DVD drive spins like it is searching for data all over the disc.

However, what appears is that not all the data I put on it with InCD is there. Some are missing from view in windows.

I tried some recovery software [IsoBuster, Data Retriever, Active File Recovery and Unstoppable Copier] to regain some of that "lost" data.

And to answer any other typical questions from anyone ahead of time:
-very few programs are running on startup.
-I disable virus scanning before burning.
-I don't do anything else during burning.
-no conflicts in Device Manager.
-all data comes from the harddrive.
-there is no monitoring programs running in the background.

I have a bunch of other CDRW's I can try [Kodak, Mitsubushi Chem., Princo, Fornet Int., Plasmon, TDK or Ritek]. I'm going to run a test.
1. format all of them in InCD
2. run CD Speed scandisc for errors if possible
3. let InCD burn the exact same data onto each one of them
4. run scandisc again
5. try to see if any data is still missing or media is unreadable.

It may be more work too, but can you ckeck the speeds @ which your writing them as well? Then perhaps, back it down 1 notch and see if it occurrs at a slightly slower speed?

Are you running with 6s02 firmware?
The new firmware comes out on Jan 3rd. It may be worth while to upgrade.

Action Jackson:

It would be great if you could run more extensive InCD tests!

Here are some thoughts, in more or less random order. The main point should be to establish a clean testing environment.

1. On my 98SE box, after exchanging the HDD in August '02, I only installed 98SE, the MS critical updates, WMP 7.1 without Adaptec's burning plugin, Nero, InCD and EasyWriteReader. In particular, I never installed additional ASPI layers, because Nero and InCD are working fine.

2. To get a clean system, it would be best if you reinstalled 98SE and MS updates, and then installed the latest Nero 5.5.10.0, InCD 3.51.91 and EasyWriteReader from www.ahead.de (the version of EasyWriteReader included on InCD formatted discs doesn't always work correctly). The combination of Nero, InCD and EasyWriteReader is fairly typical, and using the latest versions would make your testing results last longer.

3. In case you are wondering, this is what I did to upgrade to Nero 5.5.10.00 from an OEM version on my XP box. First, I ran Start| Run| regedit to copy the serial number listed in

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ahead\Nero - Burning ROM\Info\Serialx

Then I removed the OEM version, installed Nero 5.5.10.0 and the Nero Language English file (needed for help files) downloaded from www.ahead.de, called up Nero, and in the personalize box I input the copied serial number. Next, I installed InCD 3.51.91 downloaded from www.ahead.de (no need for a separate serial number once Nero is installed) and finally EasyWriteReader.

4. I'm still running Nero 5.5.9.17 and InCD 3.51.61 on my 98SE box, but I intend to upgrade to 5.5.10.0 and 3.51.91 over the weekend. Then we could compare our IOSUBSYS directories to double-check that no extra drivers are present. It's better to make sure beforehand; otherwise you might need to re-run your tests if we discovered conflicting drivers later.

5. The reasons for mentioning EasyWriteReader above are two-fold. First, you mentioned inserting InCD discs into your DVD-ROM drive, and 98SE needs EasyWriteReader for reading both CD-RW and CD-MRW discs in CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drives. Of course, the ability to read InCD discs in CD/DVD-ROM drives is useful in practice. Second, it will add an interesting aspect to your testing: using CD Speed ScanDisc on a CD-MRW disc in my DVD-ROM drive produced a highly systematic pattern of red blocks, although the disc looked OK on my LTR-48125W; unfortunately I can't post pictures here.

6. You should decide how to set Autoinsert Notification for your burner and reader; I'm using "on" for both, but some users must set it to "off" for InCD to work at all.

7. It would be best to test both regular CD-RW (UDF 1.50) and CD-MRW (Mt. Rainier), without using the verify-after-write option for CD-MRW.

8. I repeat: If you wish to re-use a disc (e.g., because it failed in your experiments), don't try to save time by using any quick formatting or quick erase options; always do Full Erase in Nero| Recorder| EraseReWritable. If I recall correctly, this was recommended in the InCD manual. Well, if you wanted, you could run separate tests to check whether quick erase or reformatting produce similar results, but for your main tests it would be best to stick to a supposedly safest policy.

9. Here is a suggestion on how to check for disappearing data. You could create a directory, say C:\InCDtest, containing several subdirectories and about 400MB of data (most reviews use 400MB). After using Explorer to copy this directory to a freshly formatted disc on drive E: (say), you could call up FileSync (a great program from www.fileware.com) to compare C:\InCDtest with E:\InCDtest, both via subdirectory contents and through binary comparisons of all the files. If everything is OK, you could eject the disc via the InCD icon, reinsert it into your DVD-ROM (say D: ), and use FileSync for comparing C:\InCDtest with D:\InCDtest. Next, you could insert the disc into your burner, wait for the InCD mounted message, and call up FileSync again. Of course, you could use other programs similar to FileSync, but this should give you a general idea.

10. Note that if you insert a CD-RW InCD disc into your burner for reading only, your burner should not write to it (no red LED blinks). In contrast, for a CD-MRW disc you may see writes (red LED blinks) when background formatting continues, or Mt. Rainier discovers and corrects errors!

11. Although you seem to be mostly interested in stability rather than speed, if you wanted to give timing results as well, note the following. For CD-MRW, both writing speeds and times to eject could depend on whether background formatting has finished. This can be checked by Nero Medium Info. It seems that on my LTR-48125W the only way to ensure that background formatting finishes is to copy data up to the disc's capacity (apparently formatting is done when needed, i.e., there is no background formatting).

Spazmogen:

Apparently the option to control the writing speed has disappeared from InCD several versions ago, and has not been reintroduced yet (I don't have it on my XP box for LTR-48125W VS08 and InCD 3.51.91).

Further, even now Action Jackson might have gotten more than he bargained for (at least from me), and we could easily overload him with our wishes!

Seriously though, if you have any thoughts on how such tests should be made, please share them with us. As far as I know, systematic tests of InCD with various media have never been reported, and I for one would love to be able to give a suitable link when discussing InCD problems, since many such problems are apparently due to mismatches between media and burners rather than to InCD itself. It is hard to say how such tests should look like before trying, and we may learn something on the way.

Once some initial tests are made, they could be expanded to other versions of Windows (although I believe 98SE if fine as a yardstick), other burners (even older Lite-On drives are still of interest), and newer firmwares, especially in view of the comments made in

http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php ... adid=60252

Finally, in view of your former formidable reports, it would be great if you could run some tests yourself!

My own contributions could be quite limited, since I'm using very cheap media without major problems (I only had some difficulties with discs formatted by earlier versions of InCD). However, once a testing standard is established, I could give results for my media as well.

KCK:
sorry. I forgot about the dropping of writing speed. I got into that when I did a InCD testing in my Lite On owner's 1st impression thread.

Old habits die hard for us older farts.

I'll be flashing my Lite On 52x upto the latest firmware, then I'll try some tests as time permits this weekend.

Are we talking about old style InCD formating or cd-mrw ?

I've got 10x & 24x rated RW discs too, just FYI.

Spazmogen:

As I wrote to Action Jackson, it would be best to test both CD-RW and CD-MRW. Many users are happy with classical CD-RW (readable under XP SP1 natively), but CD-MRW presents new aspects. I'm using both, since the same backups done in two different formats are less likely to fail on both copies. If we had results for both formats, we could see if the current implementation of Mt. Rainier lives up to its reputation.

So you may test whichever format you prefer, and perhaps Action Jackson will test the other one.

Spazmogen,

I remember you said you're running Win98SE as well like me.
Plus you and I have a number of similar CDRW's so it would be interesting for us to compare results.
I recently flashed to the 6S07 version.

KCK,

I'll read your post again later. I have to go to sleep for work soon.
If memory serves me correctly, the InCD version I have is for Mt. Rainier only.

I'll make up some files consisting of large and small:
-MPEG's
-AVI's
-doc's, txt's, excel files.
-jpegs
-wav's
-mp3's.

and yes all the files will be consistent throughout the testing.

Action Jackson:

Yes, you should definitely get some sleep before reading "dense" posts, such as mine!

I've never heard about an InCD version that would work with CD-MRW only. But if it's a retail version, you must have a serial number; for an OEM version, the serial number can be discovered as suggested in point 3 of my former message. In both cases installing 3.51.91 shouldn't be a problem!

And yes, I also remembered that Spazmogen's setup was similar, except for ASPI, so comparisons wouldn't hurt.

hello KCK.

just wanted to drop a good word for the work you put into InCD and packet-writing issues, here and also at cdfreaks and cdr-info.

i've been reading your posts and chasing links nested n levels deep for an hour or so...

as you probably already noticed, i follow closesly all such thread here at CDRLabs forums, even if i don't cotribute much. i love packet writing, or rather did as i don't have any such prog. on my system now.
bad experiences with BSODs from InCD.

when i'll have more time i'll back up my whole system, clean install winXP and give InCD another go, also try DirectCD too!

anyway, good to see someone else with such interest in the packet writing business, it's not all that popular.

keep up your good work!

OK.

Flashed firmware to 6S0A and a CD Speed write data disc test to a 24x Verbatim RW.

I compared the results to 6S02.

About 7 seconds faster with 6S0A than with the origianal firmware.
I can't find any screen captures of tests I've run with 6s07 & 6s08 and the Verbatim RW disc. Total time was 4:52, and it's still CAV too.

Action Jackson: can you run a test on the Verbatim and post your results?

Next up: cd-mrw tests

dodecahedron:

Thank you very much for the kind words. I have been mostly supplying quite rudimentary information that should have been available on Ahead's site a long time ago; I hope CCampbell keeps his promises, and Ahead's improved technical support will allow me to slow down at the end of January.

The current status can be summed up as a vicious circe: packet writing unreliable => not popular among users => gets little attention from software developers, burner and media makers => packet writing unreliable. This vicious circle can only be broken by users reporting positive experiences, instead of the usual cries "it doesn't work for me!".

CD-MRW
InCD 3.51.91
Win98SE
Adaptec 4.71 ASPI

Try as I might, I can not get CD-MRW to work for me with the newest version. I can format a disc, but it never finishes, and it whole system gets very SLOW. Slow to the point of being unusable. I left it for 30 minutes to finish the format and it was still horribly slow. I can format a normal InCD disc and use it, but not CD-MRW.

I will have to revert back to my previous version on InCD (3.51.61) as everything worked fine with it.

I just installed a new MS Optical Wheel mouse (USB) and thought it may have been that conflicting somewhere. But all was fine after I forced the disc from the drive. CD-MRW is just not working for me with the newest version.

I was able to format an 'old' style InCD disc. Useable space 534mb on a 650mb Verbatim 24x RW disc. I tried to pack it to the rim, and I did so much so, that it balked at the last 70mb file as being too big for the remaining space.

So, 463mb transfered in about 4 minutes with an old style InCD disc.

Just FYI, CD-MRW said the disc was ready to be used, but the formating was still going on in the background, and bogged my whole system down. The disc said 503mb was available after the CD-MRW format.

An 'old style' format with a InCD gave me 534mb. I tried to pack 532 onto the disc to leave a little room left over, but I miscalculated I guess. And it left out one 70mb file.

I don't own the 52x, but I am guessing the RW part of the firmware for my drive would be the same as yours. I formatted a 12x RW disc, as I don;t have any 24x ones to CD-MRW and it went perfectly fine. I wrote some files to it and that went pretty good too. I think instead of reverting to the previous version of InCD, you might want to consider re-installing the latest one again.

which drive do you have & which O/S are you running?

I got the 48x24x48 and running Windows XP Pro with SP1, with the latest version of InCD. Anyone else encountered a problem with the 52x like Spaz did?

I believe 48x24x48x & the 52x drive are exactly the same, just different firmware.

I've removed InCD 3.51.91 and put back 3.51.61.

I formated the Verbatim 24x RW again in cd-mrw and it worked like a charm. I'm just waiting for the background formating to finish before I start my next test. But this time there's no sluggishness. The new version was brutal for me.

OK.

After the CD-MRW formtting finshed, I had 503mb of useable space.

I did the ctrl + click thing until I'd located 497mb of folders & files.

Then I right clicked and "Send to InCD Drive".

Total time for transfer was 4:20.

The disc was a Verbatim 24x RW.

I then ran CD Speed's Disc Quality check.

Total errors: 0


BTW: I tried to install Easy Write Reader so I could read the disc in another drive, but during the required reboot, I would get a Windows Protection Error. I had no choice but to remove Easy Write Reader from my system. As long as I use the burner to read the CD-MRW discs, I'm fine.

Spazmogen:

Thanks for the nice results, but I have a couple of questions and comments.

1. For packet writing (CD-RW and CD-MRW), most reviews (here and at www.cdfreaks.com and www.cdrinfo.com) copy about 400MB of data. So comparisons would be easier if you used the same amount instead of 500MB.

2. It should be reported whether the tests were done on fresh discs or reformatted ones (most reviews skip this point). Of course, it would be best to use fresh discs, but this is not always feasible. On the other hand, for CD-MRW, after a quick reformat or a quick erasure via Nero, apparently there is no need for background formatting, and hence data transfers can be faster. Thus, to prevent such "false" speedups, I believe one should use Full Erase in Nero| Recorder| EraseReWritable. BTW, could some expert explain how a Fully Erased disc compares to a fresh one?

3. How did you discover that CD-MRW formatting was finished? As I wrote earlier, the only way I know is via Nero| Recorder| Medium Info (which on some systems needs InCD ejecting the disc first). Further, it seems that timing results for recent Lite-On and Plextor burners don't really depend on background formatting. Could you confirm this conjecture at least for InCD 3.51.61? (Your bad experience with 3.51.91 is another story.)

4. Your timing of 4:20 looks much better than rdgrime's 5:45 reported in

http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php ... adid=60252

It's hard to say whether this could be due to firmware upgrades, using fresh vs re-used discs, or different OS-es. Maybe you and rdgrimes could try to clarify this point?

Action Jackson and Spazmogen:

Sorry for yet another dense post, but here are the promised data to help troubleshooting InCD problems under Win98SE.

Upgrading my 98SE box, I first removed EasyWriteReader, InCD and Nero (in this order), as well as C:\Program Files\Ahead. Second, I installed Nero 5.5.10.0 downloaded from www.ahead.de (using my OEM serial key). Then an install of InCD 3.51.91 put into C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\IOSUBSYS the two files

12/12/02 17:52:14 260803 C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\IOSUBSYS\BSUDF.VXD
10/28/02 15:53:02 14105 C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\IOSUBSYS\CDRBSVSD.VXD

and afterwards installing EasyWriteReader from www.ahead.de added

01/05/03 01:53:52 114367 C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\IOSUBSYS\BSUDFRDR.VXD
01/05/03 01:53:52 23715 C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\IOSUBSYS\INCDRM.VXD

My final C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\IOSUBSYS lists as follows:

BIGMEM DRV 9,952 04-23-99 10:22p BIGMEM.DRV
ESDI_506 PDR 24,406 04-23-99 10:22p ESDI_506.PDR
HSFLOP PDR 25,741 04-23-99 10:22p HSFLOP.PDR
RMM PDR 13,242 04-23-99 10:22p RMM.PDR
SCSIPORT PDR 23,650 04-23-99 10:22p SCSIPORT.PDR
APIX VXD 29,497 04-23-99 10:22p APIX.VXD
ATAPCHNG VXD 11,311 04-23-99 10:22p ATAPCHNG.VXD
CDFS VXD 59,133 04-23-99 10:22p CDFS.VXD
CDTSD VXD 13,884 04-23-99 10:22p CDTSD.VXD
CDVSD VXD 32,419 04-23-99 10:22p CDVSD.VXD
DISKTSD VXD 18,889 11-17-99 5:36p DISKTSD.VXD
DISKVSD VXD 10,194 04-23-99 10:22p DISKVSD.VXD
DRVSPACX VXD 57,642 04-23-99 10:22p DRVSPACX.VXD
NECATAPI VXD 9,926 04-23-99 10:22p NECATAPI.VXD
SCSI1HLP VXD 19,270 04-23-99 10:22p SCSI1HLP.VXD
TORISAN3 VXD 11,067 04-23-99 10:22p TORISAN3.VXD
VOLTRACK VXD 18,491 04-23-99 10:22p VOLTRACK.VXD
NEROCD95 VXD 39,882 03-11-02 11:55a nerocd95.vxd
NTMAPHLP PDR 9,849 10-12-99 2:56p NTMAPHLP.PDR
BSUDF VXD 260,803 12-12-02 5:52p bsudf.vxd
CDRBSVSD VXD 14,105 10-28-02 3:53p CDRBSVSD.vxd
BSUDFRDR VXD 114,367 01-05-03 1:53a bsudfrdr.vxd
INCDRM VXD 23,715 01-05-03 1:53a incdrm.VXD

The 04-23-99 files are original 98SE, DISKTSD.VXD and NTMAPHP.PDR come from the MS 1394 supplement (needed by my external FireWire enclosure), NEROCD95.VXD is due to Nero, BSUDFRDR.VXD and CDRBSVSD.VXD come from InCD 3.51.91, whereas BSUDFRDR.VXD and INCDRM.VXD come from EasyWriteReader.

To ease further comparisons, here is an extract from my Nero log:

Windows 98 4.10
WinAspi: File 'Wnaspi32.dll': Ver=1, 0, 0, 0, size=36864 bytes, created 4/23/99 10:22:00 PM
Recorder: <LITE-ON LTR-48125W> Version: VS08 - HA 1 TA 0 - 5.5.10.0
Adapter driver: <NTMAPHLP> HA 1
CD-ROM: <TOSHIBA DVD-ROM SD-C2102>Version: 1729 - HA 0 TA 0 - 5.5.10.0
Adapter driver: <ESDI_506> HA 0

Existing drivers:
File 'IoSubSys\SCSI1HLP.VXD': Ver=4.10.1998, size=19270 bytes, created 4/23/99 10:22:00 PM
File 'IoSubsys\NEROCD95.VXD': Ver=4.5.0.14, size=39882 bytes, created 3/11/02 11:55:38 AM
File 'IoSubsys\CDFS.VXD': Ver=4.10.1998, size=59133 bytes, created 4/23/99 10:22:00 PM
File 'IoSubsys\ESDI_506.PDR': Ver=4.10.2222, size=24406 bytes, created 4/23/99 10:22:00 PM
File 'IoSubsys\Ntmaphlp.pdr': Ver=4.10.2223, size=9849 bytes, created 10/12/99 2:56:42 PM
File 'IoSubsys\Disktsd.vxd': Ver=4.10.2223, size=18889 bytes, created 11/17/99 5:36:48 PM
File 'IoSubsys\BSUDF.VXD': Ver=3.5.19.1, size=260803 bytes, created 12/12/02 5:52:14 PM
File 'IoSubsys\CDRBSVSD.VXD': Ver=5.0.1, size=14105 bytes, created 10/28/02 3:53:02 PM
File 'IoSubsys\NTMAPHLP.PDR': Ver=4.10.2223, size=9849 bytes, created 10/12/99 2:56:42 PM (Adapter driver for rec)

If your IOSUBSYS contents differ, you may be in trouble. The typical culprits include acbhlpr.vxd, cdr4vsd.vxd, cdralvsd.vxd, cdrpwd.vxd, cdudf.vxd, cdudfrw.vxd, drvwppqt.vxd, drvqw117.vxd, udfreadr.sys as well as cdr4dll.dll, cdral.dll and cdrtc.dll in C:\Windows\System. Anyway, if you have significant differences, please report them here.

As for Spazmogen's problems with InCD 3.51.91, for 3.51.61 I had

BSUDF VXD 254,660 10-24-02 10:41a bsudf.vxd
CDRBSVSD VXD 12,573 10-28-02 12:10p CDRBSVSD.vxd

or in other words,

BsUDF.VXD 3.5.16.1 B.H.A.
CDRBSVD.VXD 4.9.1.0 B.H.A.

Concerning APSI layers, on my 98SE box Nero InfoTool only reports original ASPI files dated 04-23-99 (WNASPI32.DLL, APIX.VXD, WINASPI.DLL), and Nero ASPI as not installed.

So far everything works OK on my 98SE box; in particular, both CD-RW and CD-MRW formatted with older and current versions of InCD are read by the DVD-ROM drive. If you still have problems, please provide enough details for troubleshooting.