DVD-RW drive going bad ?

Post by **spiritplx** » Thu Nov 15, 2007 12:16 am

Besides gaming, one of my main hobbies is collecting old 80s/90s cartoons and putting them on DVDs. Normally when I burn, I do not verify the data on the disc. However, the last few burns I turned the option on, and the verification has failed 5 times in a row now.

When I play the DVD with a program such as VLC, it freezes/crashes near the end of the disc. This is if I play it in either of my drives at home (crashes in roughly the same place). However, playing the exact same DVD in my work computer using VLC, I am able to play right through the same area without crashing.

I know this isn't much info to go off of, but does anyone have any ideas of what might be causing this behavior ? Could a newer drive with a better laser read semi faulty discs ? Or perhaps both of my drives are just having trouble reading discs (although it seems odd that they would crash in the same place).

I am stuck, so I would appreciate any input. If I can provide any more info that might help, let me know, and I will do my best.

Post by **opethfan** » Thu Nov 15, 2007 2:13 am

DVD burners are like $20 now. I'd suggest getting one and trying it out. If it works, great! If not, maybe its a software issue, and its only $20.

Post by **Mozgus** » Thu Nov 15, 2007 10:00 am

There's too many variables. I get this problem here and there. All you can do is stick with good drives burning good media from good brands with good dye quality and good label-side protection, and store them in good cd booklets. It's all good.

Post by **spiritplx** » Thu Nov 15, 2007 10:14 am

Yeah, I guess more important than fixing/diagnosing the drive is to determine how I can validate whether or not the DVDs I have burned in the past are corrupt or not.

If burners are that cheap, I will probably just buy a new one. But if I have to collect hours and hours of cartoons again and recreate all those DVDs, I am going to cry.

Post by **spiritplx** » Tue Nov 20, 2007 3:09 pm

Ok, after a little more testing, I was able to determine that the DVDs themselves were bad. I don't recall ever having a problem with a full spindle, but all of them seem to be defective.

This leads me to worry about all my other previous DVDs which I did not verify their data. Does anyone know of a simple program/tool that can verify that all sectors on the disc are readable (no errors) ?

Post by **Mozgus** » Tue Nov 20, 2007 3:31 pm

Nero DiscSpeed is my favorite. It comes with Nero but might be a free download on their site, on it's own. It can check for unreadable sectors, and also determine the quality of the discs you bought by, from what I understand, reading super fast and monitoring the rate of error-checking feedback.