DVD burner screwed by 2nd burner added to system

"When you have eliminated the impossible..."

I would repeat the removal/reinstallation, but reinstall only the LG, just to be certain there isn't some weird interaction between them (which I doubt).

This is probably a coincidental event. The LG's failure has nothing to do with the installation or use of the Lite-On burner. You can confirm this by installing the LG in another computer.

Some years back my computer's CD-ROM drive started acting crazy and returning error messages. The firmware had apparently failed -- but not enough to keep the drive from working altogether. Replacing the drive fixed the problem.

...

What type of IDE cable are you using for these drives? The 40 conductor type or the 80 conductor type? The connectors are the same.

Old Guy

Two issues, jumpers and cables. My guess(tm) is that you have both drives jumpered identically for master or slave. That won't work. One has to be master, and the other slave (or both on drive select).

I do not like to run two drives on the same IDE controller or same ribbon cable. It really slows down copying DVD's, but is adequate for any other purpose. With both drives on one cable, one drive acts as a master, while the other acts as a slave. There are combinations of drive manufacturers that just don't seem to get along. You may have one of those. I've had good luck with LG burners in general. Not so good luck with Lite-On. Try putting the drive that does the most burning and gets the most use by itself on the secondary IDE controller, and the other drive as a slave to the hard disk drive on the primary.

Be VERY careful how you set the jumpers. One mistake in jumpering and you'll scramble your hard disk drive. For the drive on the secondary IDE, just set it for either Master or Drive Select. For the drive sharing the cable with the hard disk, set the hard disk for master, and the added drive to secondary. If that doesn't work, go shopping for a pair of identical drives, which should cooperate.

If you don't want to risk scrambling the hard disk, both CD/DVD drives on the secondary cable. Set the jumpers on both drives to drive select, and let them argue among themselves as to who gets to play master and slave.

There's some question as to whether to use 40 or 80 wire ribbon cable. Some of the faster 16x and 24x DVD drives are fast enough that an 80 wire ribbon cable is required to get full speed. 16x is 22Mbits/sec.

40 wire yields 33Mbits/sec, while 80 wire is needed for UDMA 4 at 66Mbits/sec. 80 wire isn't really needed, but it does help and is generally recommended.

Also, check for firmware updates. (Don't install EW if in the US).

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

by

There SHOULD be no relationship, but experience with LITE-ON and LG drives leads me to think otherwise. I've killed 3 LG burners, and all failed within a week of me attaching a LITE-ON burner for use as a second drive. Either I've had bad luck with the LG drives, or LITE-ON stuff kills LG stuff.

The LGs were models GH22NS50 and GH22LS50. They're almost identical (the NS50 is an LS50 without LightScribe). All were purchased in 2009, but were none were bought together.

I still have the LS50 in my main PC...It makes coasters, and only reads CDs. It won't read DVDs, and will usually freeze the PC if one is inserted. The PC then hangs while posting if rebooted, unless I remove the DVD first. LightScribe doesn't work (freezes PC when I try to burn the label).

When they failed, I tried reinstalling in device manager. Didn't help. I moved them to another PC...same results. I tried a firmware update on two of them. It succeeded both times, but didn't fix anything.

As for LITE-ON stuff, it's cheap, but it works. The LITE-ON burner that seemingly killed the LGs is 5 years old and still works great (it's my main drive now...) I also have a CD-RW drive from them that's

9.5 years old and has seen its fair share (hundreds) of burning jobs...it still works as well.

t

No luck with that so far after several iterations - I think this is how cables get worn out more than any other reason. (forgot to mention, 80 conductor cables, and I always pretty much use the jumpers set on CS these days)

I found a couple more odditys; when I try to hook it up alone on secondary channel as slave the POST screen stalls with a message that the drive is non-ATAPI compatible, and nothing else happens till I take the drive back out. When I put it by itself on secondary as master It's redetected ok as a dvd-ram etc, as normal, but still doesn't play any of my dvd-r's - but it will still read a dvd-r of music files that I have, and will also play any store-bought dvd that i have. Also, using Nero's Infotool, It will identify a home recorded dvd-r as such, so I'm beginning to suspect some modification was made to my player - I guess I'll try it in another machine but don't hold out much hope for being able to use dvd-rs on it any more.

ed

Trying to avoid that, but it probably would 'fix' the problem.

Thanks, Mike

Forgot to say, 80 conductor with jumpers set on cable select.

Thanks, Mike

Oops, forgot to mention, 80 conductor and suing jumpers set to CS - I don't think I have any more 'puters that need any master/slave settings.

It's good to review these things I've forgotten, but I don't think that I've ever really done any optical drive to optical drive recording; up until yesterday I'd been keeping a dvd burner and a cd burner so the other burner can have a rest when I need to burn a CD - but, picked up a secondhand dvd burner so's I'd have a spare, and that's what I get for being prepared ...

I've had good luck with LG burners in general. =A0Not so

I Think that's what I'll do from now on. The LG burner has been best drive I've seen as far as being able to read a dirty or scratched up disk like they sometimes are from the local library

(snip some good stuff)

I like the 80 wire ones, and try to keep myself supplied with plenty from the local scrap yard or recyclers. Thanks for the specs on the different speeds, can't seem to remember much of that kind of thing any more.

Ah, excellent! I'll chek both of those out.

Thanks, Mike

Jeff Lieberman's suggestion that you might have the jumpers set incorrectly is a strong possibility. Check that, if you haven't already.

Interesting - it sure looks like either they interacted or I s'pose possibbly there was some kind of code inside the LG one to cause it to partially disable itself, either accidentally or on purpose, grrrr...

Now that you mention it, I did have the drive refuse to install a couple times

Just curious, do the LG drives have CD abilities still?

This is the 1st Lite-On I that I've had, seems to burn good; says

2007 on it.

Thanks for the info,

Two of the three do. They only read CDs though, and won't burn anything. The third refused to even read CDs, so I binned it a while back.

Did you take apart the drive and clean the lens? Sometimes stuff gets stuck under the lens and blocks one led but not the other. I once found a string of spider web across a lens that blocked one led but not the other. Cleaner disc wouldn't dislodge it, but alcohol swab did.

Are you sure your discs are good? I've had new discs that developed an invisible layer of stuff. Something about outgassing of plastic and the paint on the other side. Wouldn't burn in SOME drives unless I cleaned them with windex first.

If you lose the lubrication on the laser carriage slide, you can get some weird symptoms. Taking the system apart and disturbing the dust can push it over the edge. As can twisting it slightly by torquing in another drive next to it.

You've eliminated the obvious stuff. I'd clean/lubricate the drive then go back to the EXACT mechanical and electrical conditions that worked.

Sometimes, stuff just breaks and it's coincidence.

.

I've got a couple former dvd burners that still work ok for reading and buning CDs only - pretty much behave just like cd burner, they were from either the scrapyard or the recyclers.

This is kind of strange, after lots of installing and reinstalling the drive i originally posted about, though it still doesn't show as having anything in it in windows Explorer when a dvd-r is inserted, (it's reported as *dvd-ram drive* until disc is inserted, and then shows as *cd-drive - no disc present*) it does still burn dvd-r's, which it can't, afterwards, recognize - done 2 so far that play fine on 2 other machines and the dvd player, so guess I'll see how well I can get by with that for a while.

Thanks to all for all the good hints and tips, I'm still thinking about trying to do a firmware update have to get read up on that some 1st.

Which requires the controller to handle that -- which I'm pretty sure some don't.

Isaac

d

er.

I've been inside many (non-working) optical drives, but I can't recall thinking that I should be able to clean the opposite side of the lense assembly - do you have to remove it from the sled to make it accesible, or just use some kind of special improvised tools?

e

I just bought another 100 on sale, I hope they're good; they're Sony

16x and the first 4 I used were successful - then I started messing around with both the drives sorta in random order and the problem started.

I did lube the rails and alcohol-wipe the lense on the Lite-On drive before installing it, haven't been inclined to 'break-in' to the LG one in the 3 years I've had it, since it's always worked flawlessly.

Or sometimes it's just crippled somewhat - sometimes it seems I run a home for crippled discards.

Thanks for the ideas, Mikel

Hmm, I think I'm ready for a vacation from working on burners, when I get back I may delve into performance differences due to various jumper settings.

Thanks, Mikel

=20

ASPI layer driver trouble?

Are both optical drives on the same cable, and if so, are both set for CS (= Cable Select)? What if you reverse the positions of the two drives?

I might try uninstalling both drives in the Device Manager and uninstall an= y third party UDMA driver software. Back in the Windows 98 days, when VIA = was coming out with a new driver package every few weeks, one version of th= eir UDMA driver would make file copying really slow, and I mean slower than= floppy I/O, if both disk drives were on the same cable.

That looks like a good direction to look into some, thanks for the link. At the moment I'm able to use the burner though it still refuses to properly see dvd-r's that have video files on them - it classifies them as dvd-r's with 0 bytes of capacity, yet it'll read a dvd-r that has music files on it; and, it's buned 5 videos so far it just can't read them when it's done, nor can it play them (though they work ok in a dvd player).

I think to establish whether the prob lies with the drive, or the software, I'll try putting it in another xp system and see what happens there, rather than reload any app or aspi; also dragging my feet on doing a firmware update, since they usually have dire warnings that you may kill your piece of equipment...

(Cable Select)? What if you reverse the positions of the two drives?

Not any more, now I've got the LG on the secondary channel by itself and put the Lite-On in another machine. but for now I'm trying to get caught up on achiiving a bunch of video files, if the drive will continue to work.

any third party UDMA driver software. Back in the Windows 98 days, when VI= A was coming out with a new driver package every few weeks, one version of = their UDMA driver would make file copying really slow, and I mean slower th= an floppy I/O, if both disk drives were on the same cable.

One other symptom it shows when burning something in Nero is that the speed for verifying the data after burning took a major hit, where as it used to verify at speeds from3X up to about 8X, I had to quit having it verify because it dropped down to 300 or so Kbits /sec. - ( it would record at its usual speed, though.

Thanks for the pointers, Mike

A little bit of a followup, after trying a firmware update for the LG GH22NP20 - the file executes in regular environment, and apparently didn't screw anything up, and did make a few changes, but nothing like gettring the drive back to normal. Main change is in how Nero start smart reports the contents of the drive , now rather than saying a dvd-r with video files on it has a capacity of 0 bytes, its reported as a blank dvd-r of 4.38 Gb capacity. Hopefully it still records, but I'm caught up on archiving at the moment so will test that later. Guess there's not much point in putting this in a different machine to see if it behaves differently, I feel like the drive itself is what suffered any changes that occurred.

As the firmware update presumably completely overwrites the original firmware, you have disproved my theory that the firmware coincidentally failed.

Nevertheless... You should still test the drive in another machine. That's the only way to know "fer shur" where the problem lies.