[AliL]

Hi there, I have seen various posts around the forum concerning drives that do not detect blank CD-Rs but none of the problems seen to match mine and there has (as far as I have seen) been no definitive answer.

I have a Toshiba A30-303 laptop, which some months ago the DVD-RAM combi drive gave up the ghost and is irrevocably damaged, but that's not the problem at hand. In replacement I bought the LG GSA-2166D DVD-RAM combi drive (as it is external and plugs in to a USB port), but recently it refuses to recognise my blank CD-Rs. I have tried two different types of disc to make sure it wasn't the disc type that was the problem and it won't recognise either type.

Also it will not read some of my music collection which is very frustrating as I wish to copy it to the computer to put onto my iPod. A few examples of music CDs not working are "Incubus: S.C.I.E.N.C.E.", "Incubus: Make Yourself" (Disc 2), "Incubus: Light Grenades" and "Incubus: Enjoy Incubus".

I used much of the same artist to try and show that the drive was not being selective over a publisher and its possible DRM technologies, because other CDs of the same artist did work, so there seems to be no pattern over which CDs it chooses to read, but always chooses the same ones each time. I also know that these CDs do actually work because I have used them in another DVD-ROM drive on my PC which is able to read them perfectly as do two hi-fi systems at home.

I have used the drive on two different computers to see if it was the computer that was causing the problem, however each machine runs windows XP and they both run similar software so this test may not be of any merit.

The drive will read blank DVD-Rs from the same company (Infiniti), but when the "Enable CD recording on this drive" is unchecked (from the properties menu), whenever I try and open up explorer to this CD, and error comes up saying "F:\ is not accessible. Incorrect function." Is this normal behaviour?

Finally, also attached to my PC (not the Toshiba A30-303) I have a BenQ CD-RW drive which also will not recognise Blank CD-Rs, but will however read all my music CDs and all data CDs.

I hope you can give me some help, and many thanks to anyone/everyone that can because I'd really like to start backing up my files onto CD again.

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Have you checked with the manufacturers website to see if a firmware update is available? Most optical drive manufacturers will update their firmware often to improve the performance with more media. This is especially true of newly released drives.

Sorry I would link to the latest firmware, but their javascript prevents direct linking.

[admin]

Have you checked with the manufacturers website to see if a firmware update is available? Most optical drive manufacturers will update their firmware often to improve the performance with more media. This is especially true of newly released drives.

Sorry I would link to the latest firmware, but their javascript prevents direct linking.

[AliL]

Yes, I have checked and every drive has the most updated firmware. However LG doesn't seem very keep on maintaining its old drives with firmware support, they just seem to release a new drive instead.

Alil

[admin]

As frustrating as it is, sounds like you've had another drive, "give up the ghost". CD/DVD drives use different lasers to read/write from CDs and DVDs. Optical drives contain a lot of moving parts, and have among the highest failure rates of modern system components.

[AliL]

That's unbelievably annoying considering it hasn't been used all that much except to play music CDs and DVDs, has barely moved since I bought it. On top of that it's only a year old and cost me a mint in the first place.