Sony DRU-530A unable to detect any type of disk

Thanks silimtao, but I think I will just return it and buy a different DVD writer. I spoke to Sony tech support and they have no clue what they are doing. It seems to me that this product is very particular as to how your system and software are configured. My friends have DVD writers and it was just plug-n-play.

 

Yes, the dvd-rom drive was replaced with the new dvd burner. As far as I know, then the new burner functions as drive D with the cd-rw as drive E.

I'm gonna attempt the firmware update now and hopefully that will help. I emailed Nero already about the problems I was having with their program, but so far, I've gotten nothing that's been able to help me.

Oh! Ericsmri, you recommended that I uninstall any packet writing software. Does that include uninstalling the Sonic burning software that the burner came with?

 

I got this drive a few months ago, the burner stopped recognizing cdr's (blank & alreadyburned ones), even original cd's it wouldnt recognize... Dvdr's and dvd's however it did recognize. I uninstalled all the burningsoftware and used the latest firmware. Nothing helped.. I switched the ide connectors, the drive was already master, but that didnt work either. I've disabled the DMA, that didnt work, I enabled it again after a reboot, no succes..

I returned the drive to the store and asked for another one. The one I have now worked for a about a week. I didnt use it much for burning that week.

The week after that I wanted to burn a lot of stuff. It burned great, but after about 15 cd's it failed to burn a cd. I wanted to burn the image again with a blank cd, but now it doesnt recognize it. Even normal cd's it wouldnt recognize. Same issue as last time.. but now it doesnt even recognize dvd's.
I can't return it to the stores anymore, I've made some adjustments to the frontpanel, cause it wouldnt slide out normally because I've installed the drive into a Soltek Barebone.

Anyway, I think this is the most troublesome dvd-writer out there. The sony service is pure crap, they dont help you at all, so if you can get a refund:

BRING THIS DRIVE BACK TO THE STORES AND ASK FOR REFUND.
Buy a plextor instead.
I'm stuck with this drive hopefully I can get a solution somewhere on the net...

 

Lynxy, if I was you, I would replace the CD-RW with the DVD-ROM you pulled out. Your new Sony burns CD's also, so you don't need the CD-RW. If you are going to burn an backups of your owned movies, you will want to put the original in your DVD-ROM for the read, not your burner. The burner, if like most, is locked in at 2x or 2.4x read speeds, whereas your ROM will read the DVD at whatever speed it is rated for. Using the DVD-ROM for reading will greatly reduce your overall time to read/encode/burn a movie.

 

Just a thought to those with problems. If your motherboard is of pretty recent vintage, say...last 2 yrs, you sure your drive is connect with an *80* conductor ide ribbon? You can easily tell if you have an 80 conductor cable if the connectors are color coded; blue, gray and black. For more info on 80 conductor cables see this link:
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/confCable80-c.html

Also, if you're running win 98, rename this file: scsi1hlp.vxd to something like scsi1hlp.bak. The scsi1hlp.vxd file is a virtual device driver that's installed by Win 98 and just causes problems with optical drives. As to DMA settings: I suggest going into the BIOS and selecting "Auto" and let the BIOS pick the setting. Just an FYI; hope it helps someone.

And despite anyone saying the burner MUST be the Master (or slave, or whatever), or it's not a good idea having 2 drives on the same channel, I can assure you that's not true. I've had probably more than 10 different burners of different makes and models, and got them all to work in varying types of configurations.

And yes, Sony's tech support sucks big-time.

 

Clarification on CDRW & DVD speeds- what the "X" means. See: http://peripherals.about.com/cs/cddvdcdwriters/a/blrefdvdfaq02.htm

As you can see, the "X" for both are not the same.

 

I was finally able to fix this problem. I went to "Settings", "control panel", "system", "divice manager", "CD-Rom", "Sony dru-530a", "settings", change the "start drive letter" and "end drive letter" to the letter that is being used by you "other" working CD-Rom. Then change the settings of your "other" cd-rom to the drive letter that was originally being used by the not working Sony DRU-530a drive. Reboot when finished. If this doesnt work than try naming the drives a letter not used before. I just did this and my Sony DRU-530a now works.
I have also done this in the past after trying to burn with a "Memorex DVD-R" disk. It shut down my drive completely and I had to insert a paperclip for a manual eject. That really sucked. I performed the same fix as mentioned and it fixed it right up. I now a a 50 pack of "memorex DVD-R" that I am afraid to use. I don't recommend them. I recommend Fujifilm DVD-R. I have never had a problem with them. Good luck.

Phrenn

 

I've trew this drive in the garbagecan yesterday (yes I really did, I smashed it on the floor a couple of times first =) ) and bought an aopen cdwriter/dvd-combo. I'll get the plextor 8x dvdwriter next month.
The motherboard I was using the sony dvdwriter on was a brand new one (soltek amd64 with nvidia 250gb chipset) and I tried EVERYTHING. Oh well.. I wont be coming here anymore so my last words are:

GET A REFUND if you can.

cya

 

Next time, can ya just send me the burner? j/k. Sorry to hear you had so much trouble. Just an FYI, I think Plextor has a 12X burner (but where the heck is the *8*x media?). I'd suggest waiting awhile; prices will drop and dual layer burners may be an option. Think Sony already has one out, but something tells me you wouldn't be interested. Check out www.newegg.com ; they're always running sales. Good luck with the new burner.

 

hi i just purchased a new sony dru530A dvd/cd +/-RW drive... i wish i could get even as far as most of u guys...my windows XP won't even recognize the drive as a dvd writer... it lists the name right but says its a dvd rom drive... and all i can do is play cd/dvd's for now.... i'm no newbie when it comes to computers but i can't get this to work... lol i don't ever remember having so much problems with any hardware... i haven't even upgraded the firmware yet b/c i want windows to properly recognize the drive first... should i try to upgrade tyhe firmware anyway? also i cant even return it nbow cuz i mutilated the box to get the upc code for the rebate lol... nice gimmick that one... i didn't even stop to think that i might have to return it cuz fo the name...u would think that a name like sony would work ...anyways any help would be appreciated... thanx

 

hiya jandv- just some possible solutions...

Go into safe and delete all optical drives from device manager.

On reboot, tap F8 or whatever key you need to get into the BIOS. Make the setting Auto for the Sony, ESC out of BIOS finish boot, look into Device Manager and see if it's recognized as a Sony. Have you installed any burning software to see if the thing even burns? I remember I had the same problem as you when I first installed my dru-530a; can't remember what I did exactly, but it was finally recognized.

Just some random thoughts- is your BIOS up to date? Try the firmware upgrade; just make sure you uninstall DLA and disable DMA.

 

I have similiar problem as most of you and very angry with this stupid Sony DRU-530a driver. Still I am hesitating that if I should return it to the store because I got it realy cheap (Around CAD $88 Dollars).

I hooked up this Sony driver(Slave) with my LG CD-RW/DVD Combo drive(Master), and the fireware has already been upgraded to latest version 2.1, My problem is now whenever I checked the device manager about both drivers, no matter how I set up the DMA/PIO mode, the current transfer mode is always been recognized as "PIO Only", which is really frustrated, I am using WINDOWS XP, Nero 6, POWER DVD and DVD Shrink. Mother board is ASUS. PIII 1Ghz.

Now, the only problem is I cannot use DMA mode and the Sony 530a always burning or reading at approx. 1x speed. My LG too.

I tried reboot, reset the DMA setting in "Device Manager" many times and tried all the ways in this thread and doesn't help. I really did everything I know.

Any one can help me out or I should return it definitely to the store (3 days left for refund period).

Thanks

 

hi ares- just some thoughts. I have the same exact model burners you have with the Sony as slave on a homemade system.

You using an 80 conductor ide cable? You can tell if the connectors are different colored; blu, gray, and black.

Your BIOS up to date? Have you looked into your BIOS that might give a hint as to what's going on, e.g. secondary channel set to "auto" or something else?

Have you checked for an updated ide controller driver for your motherboard? Recently, when installing 2 optical drives on a different system, neither were working properly until I got the motherbord drivers disk and reinstalled the ide controller drivers.

You have more than one packet writing software installed, like InCd, DLA, DirectCD? Uninstall all of them, and reinstall ONLY one, as they tend to conflict. DLA works just fine for both my Sony and LG burners.

Maybe you should just master the Sony, and disconnect the LG for troubleshooting purposes.

When you upgraded the firmware, did you uninstall DLA and disable DMA as instructed?

What's your power supply? You could be under-powered. I'd say anything less than 350 watts, and you may have a power issue; you're not having random reboots, are you?

Maybe you can slave the Sony to the master channel to see what happens.

For $88 CAD, I'd say you got a real bargain (yeah, I know, but if it doesn't work, what's the diff). This model Sony is still selling for around $149 US AFTER rebate. Worse come to worse, you can sell it, probably for a profit. All the ideas I can come up with at the moment. Good luck, let us know. Hopefully something will work. Oh, just for the heck of it, make sure the connections are seated really well; there's been times I've had connections just well enough for the hardware to be recognized, but not work well. A firm push of the connector fixed it.

 

Hi Silimtao- Since my motherboard is pretty old (ASUS CUV4X-E), there isn't much to do with BIOS(The latest one on ASUS website for it was released on June xx, 2001. But I did upgrade the VIA 4in1 driver and changed the IDE cable to 80 conductor one. Uninstalled every Burning Software and according to the instruction reset the firmwave. Still, nothing really helps until I disconnected both SONY and LG burner, restarted the machine without any burner and then restarted with only Sony connected, tested everything and looked OK, then restart the machine with both SONY and LG hooked up.
Now it looks OK to me, both are Ultra DMA 2 mode, the only problem is when I use DVD shrink to backup DVDs. When the process of backup to harddisk is running, the speed is only up to 2M/s, no mattter I used LG Burner(16xDVD-ROM) or SONY Burner(12xDVD-ROM). But one of my friends has the same SONY 530a but can process to at least 5~6M/s on Sony 530a or 9~10M/s on Pioneer 16xDVD-ROM. Not sure why on my machine the reading is so slow. (Fortunately the writing speed is 5.5M/s on my 4x Sony DVD+RW disc.)

The other problem is I am not sure how long it can be acting normally.

Sony's technical support is totally useless, I just hope their warrant service is good. (Hehee...So whenever there is something wrong I can just bring it to them to fix).

By the way, since you use this driver for a while, do you know how its compatibility with those cheap 4x DVD-R disc (like 50 discs for $17 or less)?

Thanks for your help.

 

Hi ares-Well, glad you got the thing working. Your burner may not be as fast as your friend's for a number of reasons: e.g. say he has a P4 chip running at an 800 Mhz font side bus, and you have something like 500 Mhz chip running at 66 Mhz FSB, then that's like a race between the tortoise and the hare. Is your hardrive spinning at 7200 prm, or 5400? Also you may only have a 2 meg cache as opposed to an 8 meg cache that would make your system slower. Also, how much ram do you have? When's the last time you did a clean install of your OS? Over time, "OS decay" sets in, and things can slow to a crawl. A corrupted profile can really slow things down too. A couple months ago, I upgraded to a 250 gig HD with an 8 meg cache, and did a clean install, and my boot time jumped from about a minute and 1/2 to about 30 secs. using XP pro. So there's lots of variables to consider.

If you're running XP, you can turn off some background running services; see http://www.blkviper.com for a list of services that's safe to turn off. This can speed up the system just a tad.

If you have Win 98, search for this file: scsi1hlp.vxd, and rename it to scsi1hlp.bak. It's a usless device driver that really screws up optical drives, especially burners.

If you don't know your front side bus and clockspeed, google a nice little utility called Belarc. It gives a nice snapshot of your system. Also, http://www.pcpitstop is a good site to benchmark your system and gives you good tips on how to optimize your system.

As to the media I use- TDK works best for me. Imation and Memorex too. But for really cheap, Khypermedia works well also- the green lettered ones. Teon, also made by Khypermedia is kinda hit or miss. Bought a 15 pack spindle from Staples for $6 US after rebate. I bought 2 25 pack spindles from tigerdirect for $16 US, but shipping came to $11 and change. Still, I consider anything less than a dollar pretty cheap. If you're unsure of which media is best for you, I'd suggest buying 1 disk of different brands to experiment with. I've stuck with +Rs since they seem to work best for me, and seems most compatible with my regular set-top DVD player. Strangely, I've seen posts on the forum where SONY media doesn't work; I can't ever find Sony media sold anywhere; doesn't matter- I'm pissed with Sony enough that I'm not gonna give them any more of my money, lol. Well, again, glad you got the thing working, and hope this was of some help. And yeah, SONY TECH SUPPORT SUCKS!
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Just looked at your original post and see that you're running XP with a 1 gig chip. I have and AMD 2000+ that comes in at 1.67 Ghz with a 266 Mhz FSB. Using DVD XCopy and it takes about 15 mins. for me to copy a DVD. Using Shrink, it takes close to an hr. I never monitored the transfer rate, so I have no idea how fast the transfer rate is. To tell you the truth, I'm not even sure how to tell; or maybe I'm not paying attention, lol. I just click and burn, lol. And I never read instructions- gives you alot of confidence in what I've said, huh? ;-)
_X_X_X_X_X_[small]Sil[/small]

 

Hello everyone;

I have basically the same problem, except in my case my Sony DVDVRW can burn cd's and cdrw without any problems. what I cannot read or write is dvd's.

When I put a movie or a blank CD to burn neither nero or whatever dvd viewing program i use, the dvd isn't detected.

I am going to try turning the DMA off, but in advanced I will appreciate it if you guys help me troubleshoot my problem.

I tried running the Drivecheck utility from sony and when I run it with a DVD it gives me errors, but I have not been able to contact sony on this either.

Any help I will appreciate it.

Thanks;

Ugly

 

Hi Ugly,

Before u contact Sony, do following to see if it fix your problem:
1. Upgarde the firmware to 2.1a
2. unplug all the drives on the IDE cable which Sony 530a is connected.
3. Remove the IDE driver from hardware configuration and restart your machine without any optical drive.
4. If 3 is OK then only hook up the Sony 530a and restart the manchine.
5. It should be able to read DVD now, test it and change the mode to DMA if it is PIO and then shutdown your machine again
6. hook up the second drive(If you have any) and restart.
7. Test if the sony 530a is able to read or write DVD disk.
8. If 7 is OK then your problem resolved.

Let me know how it goes.

 

Ares;

I followed all your steps, but still I cannot burn dvd's, or watch movies. Nero simply reacts like as if there no dvd in my player and says the dvd burn is not ready...

My sony has the firmware up to 2.1a Funny thing is I also got a TDK 440N External DVD Burner and it happens the same with it.

What could it be?

 

Hi Ugly- Do you have a "drive select" option in any of your burning programs to tell the system which burner you want to use for DVD burning? When I first got my Sony dru-530A, I wasn't aware of this option, and got some kinda message about "no dvd in drive"- call to Sony tech support was no help (using THEIR bundled software). A closer look at the options in my burning programs tells me I have to select 1 burner or another; I have 2 the dvd burner and a regular cd/dvd player.

Does your burner recognize a retail DVD, or does it not recognize ANY burned DVD?

PS- have you experimented with different brand media? I've found certain brands simply don't work. So you may want to try a bunch of different brand media to experiment with. I'd also disconnect the external burner while troubleshooting the internal to avoid conflicts with hardware. And speaking of hardware, does Device Manager shed any light on what's going on? Your BIOS up to date? How big is your power supply, what's your chip speed, how much ram do you have, and if using XP, you have at least SP1 installed. All this can affect performance.
_X_X_X_X_X_[small]Sil[/small]

 

Out of nowhere one day my DRU-530A stopped reading any type of disk. I disconnected both of my drives and set them both at primary and put the secondary ide cable on the DRU-530A then booted up the computer. When the computer was done butting up it didnt recognize the DRU-530A. Then I turned off the system and wired it so the DRU-530A was slave and hooked up to the secondary IDE and the other drive primary to the Primary IDE. After I booted up the problem was SOLVED. Everything worked again and I havent had a problem since.