I am so sick of my BenQ DW 1640

[Pring4]

I have had so many problems trying to write media with this drive. I've only used DVD+R and DVD+DL and 50% of the times I'll get coasters. I pretty much gave up on it for awhile until I found myself with a $10 best buy gift certificate. I picked up a 10 pack of Sony DVD+R 16x media and tried again.

After my first two attempts were unsuccessful, I was extra careful with my most recent. In qSuite, I verified that the disc was recognized, enabled Solid Burn, changed the booktype to DVD-ROM, and enabled test burn. I fired up Nero and did the test at 8x and it ran through successfully. The disc ejected, I popped it back in, disabled test burn and tried to do it again. Within 20 seconds, the burn process had failed citing High Compatibility Border errors (or something like that). I tried checking the log file but it did not have this most recent failure logged.

My firmware is the msot recent - BSRB.

I am at wits end. I have had a similar problem and posted about it. That post suggested that I was using poor media. I retried it with some Verbatim media, which worked better but still generated some errors and/or coasters.

[Steve R Jones]

Have you tried DVD -R ?

[Pring4]

I actually have never tried that. If I can find some one-piece media I'll give it a shot.

[PriMaTe]

Maybe you got a bad drive? Either way may as well buy a new drive from www.newegg.com they're like $40

[soupnazi]

Yeah, if you're having that many issues with different media, it sounds like the drive may be bad. My DW1640 has been close to flawless and whenever there was a coaster it was due to the media or my PC causing a conflict. (which could be a possibility)

[Pring4]

... or my PC causing a conflict. (which could be a possibility)

Any way to be sure that you may know of?

If I do end up getting a new drive, I'd rather not get this 1640 just based on bad experience. Is there any new BenQ or any other brand that's good quality and still pretty cheap?

Edit:
Ah! I feel stupid for not mentioning this earlier, but I did often write to DVD+RWs. That worked surprisingly well. I rarely received any failed burns with Memorex or Verbatim DVD+RW media.

[hongsc]

It looks like the media you tried is decent. If the Sonys were MIJ then they are really high quality media. Have you tried updating Nero? I occasionally get failures with the illegal disc type, which went away mostly when I updated the software.

[Pring4]

After updating Nero I successfully wrote one disc!

But then I tried another and it failed to work. Then I tried another and I got another error within the first 10 seconds of burning - "Invalid Block Address" on my drive.

[rhettro]

After updating Nero I successfully wrote one disc!

But then I tried another and it failed to work. Then I tried another and I got another error within the first 10 seconds of burning - "Invalid Block Address" on my drive.

I really think your drive is going bad. I'm not sure what is the best replacement drive at the moment, I've had great luck with NEC. You may want to check out www.cdfreaks.com, browse through their forums and see what the most recommended drive is. Drives are pretty cheap right now.

[Blargosaurus]

One thing that's improved my success/failure rate on DVDs is turning down the burn speed on the drive. I burned three coasters trying to create a Longhorn install disc and backing down the burn speed resulted in two good burns in succession and several more since then.

[hongsc]

Are burning at the rated speed or higher when the burns failed? If you're using good media it shouldn't be a problem or it could be a compatibility problem. But since you used a wide range of media that factors out the compatibility issue. You could try to update the firmware using a modded one from cdfreaks to see if that fixes the problem. On a final note, Do you play games? Some games have copy protection that could cause burn failures.

[Blargosaurus]

Actually, I take back the bit about make coasters. The burns were successful, but could not be read completely during the install of Longhorn. Other people have had the same issue and suggested burning at a slower speed.

So my initial suggestion may or may not help, but if you get a successful burn and are having compatibility issues on some drives it may help.

[Pring4]

Blargosaurus:
I did try reducing the burn speed a number of times. This would work occasionally, but it was not full proof. But when they did burn successfully, my drive would read it correctly, too.

hongsc:
I'm either burning at the rated speed (1x-16x in the case of the Sonys), or well below at 4x. I don't mind waiting for the burn to complete, it's just the coasters obviously.
I do play games, but I'm not trying to make bakcups or anything. These are just data discs of avi's, jpegs, and some other documents. Previously installed protection shouldn't affect this, would it?

[Colossus]

What kind of images are you buring? Hopefully they are not some pirated software which is not a reliable test in the first place.

I havent used the BenQ, but you might want see if the drive is under warranty. I personally would just buy a new drive as they are dirt cheap.

[Pring4]

They're not really images per se, just individual files I'm burning for backup from my HD. It's probably not under warranty though. I remember buying it as I was going into my sophomore year of college. I guess it is time to buy a new one, but I'm kinda putting that off as I'm not a recent graduate without a job (and without much cash).