I had a Pioneer A08XL for a long time that suddenly stopped working. I had it for roughly 18 months, so I wasn't to worried about it, especially since I bought it from a retail store with a replacement guarantee. However, I bought it from compusa and paid 160 dollars for it, and the best DVD drive they had was a sony dru820. It's 16x dual layer dual format dvdram blah blah blah. I was a little miffed since the price was only 100 dollars and they didn't compensate me at all for the cost difference since they no longer stocked the higher end dvd drives. Anyways, I've tried 3 different kinds of media now, and looked in nero infotools, and the drive is only supporting 8x, not 16x for recording. I updated to the new firmware for the drive, and the scenario is still the same. Furthermore, the drive is pretty loud. My old pioneer was pretty quiet, I liked it a lot. I especially liked the mechanics of the drive itself, it was a lot more stable than most drives seem to be. That's just a build standard I think. Anyways, I was wondering if anyone had any ideas? I don't think it is media related as nero infotools even shows it as an 8x recorder without a disc installed. I'm using winxp pro sp2, an athlon san diego 3700+, asus a8nslipremium, and I confirmed my ASPI installation to be correct both with nero infotools and with the adaptec aspicheck utility, no problem there. Thanks!
A quick google found this: http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?SON-DRU820 Which suggests DVD+R Double/Dual Layer burning and standard dual format 4.7GB DVD burning is supported at 16X max. Double Layer and Dual Layer Recording speed is 8X max. DVD+RW speeds are 8X max for DVD+RW and 6X max for DVD-RW respectively. DVD-RAM recording is supported at 5X max. Ultra fast 48X max CD-R burning and 32X max. So what format are you trying to write?
I suppose I should have mentioned I was writing to single layer 4.7g+R discs. I very rarely use the 8.5g discs as they are very expensive.
In that case I am not sure... Perhaps you could buy another, then you could write at 16x speed again... (..... 2 x 8 = 16...)
is your media 16x ? Because I can never find any 16x just 8x. As for it showing 8x my DVD writer sometimes is randomly represented, sometimes even as just a CD burner, but changes when a DVD is inserted
Yeah it is 16x. Here in the states, just about everything is 16x labelled. yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah some discs don't work at 16x speed in certain drives. I've tried 3 different kinds of media, that all of them worked at 16x in my old burner and in my girlfriends. Memorex, Verbatim, TDK. Nevermind, for real. Color my post a rant instead.
Hey this is Cirkustanz. (finally recovered my old account information) Anyways, I've recently changed components, a different mainboard, processor, video card, and power supply. For reasons other than the drive. It's still showing as an 8x drive with nero infotools, EVEN WITH NO DISC IN THE DRIVE. I give up, this thing is getting returned.
It could be a starforce issue, check out this link on how to search for and remove it. Also what software are you using? A work colleague had this problem with Nero 7, downgraded to Nero 6 and the problems went away.
Couldn't be starforce, I don't think I have installed any games that have ever used it, even on my previous hardware, and with the new hardware the only game I installed was oblivion, which has no copyright protection at all other than the disc in tray check. For the sake of doing so, I did check however, I got nothing. My windows install is only about 4 or 5 days old, and is fully patched etc. Originally I wsa using nero 6.6 ultra, during the course of looking into it, they asked me to uninstall it, run the nero software off the website to clean the installation out, and install the OEM version of nero (also 6.6 though it was lacking certain features since it was the OEM version) and the same effect happened. If I can't get a drive to work at 16x, (it's a simple thing, optical drives) then I didn't see how sony tech support could tell me why it wouldn't work either, and sure enough they couldn't. They refuse to RMA it though, since it works, just at a slower speed. The only thing I am NOT clear on, is that I noticed in the Nvidia Ntune software, that it said the slave drive on the primary channel is set for Pio Mode. I don't have a slave drive on my primary IDE channel. My windows installed drive is a SATA, the primary IDE is a hard disk for storage of music. The optical drives are on the secondary IDE channel. Windows device manager under IDE ATAPI controllers of course reports that there is no slave drive in the primary IDE channel. I am unsure of why Ntune reports that it is there, maybe that's just how it works. I know that a drive being set in PIO mode is generally the cause for this, but shrug.
Don't know about your law in the US but in the UK if they could not repair/replace your Pioneer one (which was 16x I believe?) then you are entitled to something of similar specification (ie. a drive that works at 16x) or a refund (your choice). I would say since you have tried 3 types of media and haven't been able to burn a 16x with any of them but they do with other drives then I think you should be entitled to a replacement drive. I would try and get in contact with a manager - it's very poor customer service if they will not replace it with a drive that will work at 16x. Edit: I'm assuming it's in warranty here...
