rumblefix thanks for your help, but i have already eliminated the following things you suggested. My mac mini is about 9 months old now, and is supposed to be capable of speeds up to 8x when burning DVDs. the only two options are 1x and 2x speeds in the burn dialogue, so its not that faster speeds fail...i dont even have the option to burn faster. even at 1x the success rate is around 1 out of 10. my processor is a 1.42 GHz, and i have nearly nothing on the HD since i have 280GB of external HD space. i run no programs while burning, and have 512Mb of ram. This is not a problem with my machine or technique, it is a technical fault with the superdrive. i have tried many different types of media, with the same results...which eliminates the media issues. the errors i recieve are not accurate, which points even more to a technical issue with the drive. as you have read, i am not alone with this major issue with the superdrive, and i will not bow down and purchase more hardware that i shouldnt have to. Apple will fix this issue and replace the superdrive with a fully functional dvd burner if its the last thing i do. they will not get away with this fraud. well anyway good luck and thankls for the suggestions
Hi Funk, I forgot to ask you which OS you have and which software are you using to burn? I ask because the problem of you not having options to burn at certain speeds and also not being able to check the prevent buffer underrun option could be a bad install of the software. Maybe you should try reinstalling Toast (if that is what you are using) or perhaps use an earlier version. If that doesn't work then it could well be a faulty drive and you should try your damnest to get Apple to fix/change it. Let us know how it goes. I'm just about to try burning another Verbatim disk in my Powerbook to see if the last one was a fluke. I don't want to open the the Lacie drive (and forfeit the refund option) until I'm absolutely certain that my superdrive is buggered - however sexy that little Porsche drive looks! rich
So that Verbatim burn on the superdrive looks like it was a fluke after all. I tried to burn 3 more DVDs with Verbatims and they all bombed out. There is one last area of weirdness that I have to investigate, which is something that Funk brought up. I have never been able to burn a DVD over 4GB on the Superdrive. Every single movie I tried to burn that was over 4GB bombed. The ones that I have burnt were all around 3GB. Maybe there is something odd with this 4GB magic number. I'm going to try compressing a movie in DVD2oneX to about 3.5GB and see what happens. Perhaps theses superdrives have problems burning to the edge of DVD media. I'll get back with the results later. In the meantime I burnt my first movie with the Porsche Lacie unit. Woo-Hoo!! A 4.3GB movie burnt in 6 min (at 8X speed) on 16X rated Verbatim DVD-Rs. I havent tried 16X speed yet (3 mins I suppose). 6 mins compared to 60 mins with the crumbling Superdrive! No contest here boys. I'm burning with the Lacie from now on and I'll just keep the Superdrive for CDs and reading DVDs.
Rumble Im running 10.4 with toast 7. I thought about trying an earlier version, but i have tried to burn a data disk in finder, with the same problems. Also re: the suggestion about a bad software install, considering so many people have had the same problem, i discarded my particular the software as the problem. all burining software has the same issues with this drive: toast 6 and 7, popcorn, finder, iDVD, iMovie. Im waiting on th apple shop to get back to me on the testing. i will post the results, but im suspecting the will replace the drive with no proper explanation...i think they will want to sweep this one under the mat. im just lucky i still am under the one year hardware protection. cheers
Ok, well good luck. As you have 10.4 perhaps there is a Tiger compatability problem with your drive, the OS and maybe Toast. Since I am still in Panther I can't help you much there. I don't usually upgrade my OS until the new version has at least 3 updates (ie 10.4.3), but if your Mac Mini already had Tiger installed there's not a lot you can do, unless you reinstall an earlier OS. I just think it's weird that your software is not giving you options to burn at other speeds (even if they don't work). Perhaps it's the firmware in your Superdrive, if it isnt Toast itself causing the problem. And if all else fails, get a Lacie drive. they're not so expensive and it'll save you a lot of hassle until you can resolve the Superdrive issue.
My mini had panther pre installed on it, with upgrade disks. i upgraded to tiger, and have since installed up to 10.4.3. im not likely to downgrade just to fix the burning problem, because tiger has great features that i am not willing to sacrifice. if that being the case i would rather purchase an external burner, but at the moment i am waiting on apple to replace the hardware or upgrade the firmware. thanks for your help, and i will continue to post on the status of my problem. maybe it will help anyone in the same situation as me. cheers funky
But did you ever manage to burn any DVDs in Panther, or did you just upgrade straight away to Tiger? Can you post the drive details that your Apple Profiler gives you here and also your firmare? I came across another firmware site yesterday - perhaps they have an upgrade for your drive.
