....what would anyone suggest to get? I've heard good things reading here about various NECs, Lite-Ons and Plextors. Now before you give suggestions, I have a Sony DRU 510-a, and lately it started to go south, before about April it was flawless and would burn anything I would throw at it, now it's very very hit and miss. Nero will 'write error' every 2nd or 3rd disc now, Clone DVD gives me WriteDVD9 and WriteDVD 10 11 W2 errors, Alcohol 120% gives me occasional errors as well. Before buying another drive though, I'm going to try different media, as I have been using TDKs since I had my 1st CD-R (recommended by a site that was reputable back in the day, I forget the name now) and always assumed they were good, well now as I read on here, they're manufactured by CMC Mag, so I've switched to Fuji's done by Taiyo Yuden. But the strange thing is that until now I've never had a problem with them, and I've burned prolly close to 1000 DVDs, mostly TDKs, with it. The reason though, that I am looking into the new drive before I try new media is because the drive is a little over 2 years old now, and recently it's stopped seeing there's a disc in the drive (blank or otherwise) unless I reinsert the disc like anywhere between 2 and 20 times, also the drive tray seems to get stuck closing sometimes, and you can hear the lens moving around like it already accepted the tray. Incidentally, I noticed part of the white gear on the inside, that interlocks with the teeth in the tray to pull the tray in has turned like an orangeish color. If anyone can give me any ideas/experiences they've had with situations like this, it'd be much appreciated. Like I said, I get a good burn one in every 3 discs or so with Nero, mostly good discs with Alcohol and CloneDVD hates to work at all anymore, so it might be the media, but I don't know how I could've been using CMCMag TDKs all this time and they never messed up before. Unless they finally just wore the drive down. I'm not aversed to buying a new burner but if this one's not on it's way out just yet, I might hold off for a while. But suggestions as to what drive to buy too are appreciated (sorry for being so random and back and forth, I'm just torn between fixing this and adding another drive, because drives now are so cheap and I always forget that, having paid $250 for my drive 2 years ago).
Hey batori, If you've burned 1000 good disks and well some coasters then you may well have worn the drive out. I'm not sure of the life span but that sounds like some pretty heavy usage. If you buy a new drive try DVD Idle here at afterdawn: http://www.afterdawn.com/software/video_software/dvd_tools/dvdidle.cfm I've been using it and it does seem like my dvd player spins a whole lot less; now I do not use it on my burner but in light of what you've said I am going to try it just to see. Also well it sounds stuoid but have you cleaned your optical lens lately and is the cleaner in good condition? Anyway I use a Memorex External 2.0 USB drive; it supports DL burning +R -R WR formats plus it comes with Nero Ultra. It's lightning fast and I've had absolutely no trouble out of it. I've recently seen them in the store with a $30 mail in rebate making it about $139 USD. A bit high when compared to an internal but no installation, plug and go plus remove and travel. Again it is lightning fast burns 4.3 GB in about 7 minutes depending on burn speed I like to burn @ 2.4x Hope this helps. Later,
