My laptop has a DVD/RW (It is both dash "-" and plus "+" able...
whatever that really means.) drive. When I want to burn media,
I grab a fresh disk from my bulk supplies and load it to the drive.

Trouble #1 -- Software fails to recognize the fresh media as blank.

I start the burn processing ... chug chug chug ... and something goes
wrong.

Trouble #2 -- Software has some trouble writing the fresh media.

I grab another fresh disk and repeat, often 2 or 3 times, before
I get a successful burn.

Can someone tell me why I have so much trouble with getting a media
burn without all of the retry activities?

How do I discover exactly what is going wrong? I don't find logs or similar that explain the troubles. I use both K3B (my fave) and Brasero.

~~~ 0;-Dan

I would first make a small investment and buy a cd lens cleaner disk to make sure the lens is not dirty.

http://www.amazon.com/Allsop-56500-C...p_ob_e_title_2

In regard to Trouble #2, try burning at the lowest speed possible--like 2X. If that works, try again at 4X, then 8X, etc. and report back. I know this doesn't really address your first issue, but rokytnji did above!

How would I discover if whatever I choose to do during the burn processing is causing my errors? Typically, I use a browser to read documents from local disk or the web. I may also use emacs or OpenOffice to create or edit docs.

What real difference does if make if I choose 2x or 4x or auto as my media write speed? If I choose "auto" does the actual speed-in-use vary based on real-time conditions or does it pick one for the duration of the current burn attempt?

My drive identifies as Matshita DVD-RAM UJ-852 -- supplied with my Lenovo laptop.

Cheers,
~~~ 0;-Dan

In theory auto mode is supposed to work. It sets the speed for the duration of the burn I think. For diagnostic purposes try setting it to the lowest setting though, because sometimes lower quality media needs a lower write speed. Also, if all your disks are from the same brand/supply then maybe your supply is bad.

Try buying a few high quality disks and see if they work.

Can someone out there point to a HOWTO or other doc that explains about "auto" and "write speed" and burning media in a thorough, but not total tech-no-babble writings?

Does anyone have a handle on a reasonable reject rate for bulk media?
I can get spindles of 50 or 100 from big box stores at nice prices. Regardless of whatever reject rate I'm willing to live with, what is a reject rate that I'm likely to see in actual use?

I recently had a whole lot of DVDs burned and the reject rate was 2 out of 125 were bad (123 / 125 were good, 2 were bad), these all contain the same ISO image. These were labeled as TDK, but who knows if they are real or re-branded or knock-offs.

I always burn at the lowest rate, usually 4x. However you can burn at higher rates if you have good media. I do not recommend burning at the rate written on the disk, it's much more likely to fail from my experience, and even if it does succeed I've found some were corrupt. If you want a good investment buy some real Taiyo Yuden disks from Japan, then you can burn at whatever rate you want.

Other recommendations:

use the burnfree option for burning CDs, and the bufsize option for burning DVDs, these prevent buffer underrun or eliminate it. Also, avoid burning on-the-fly i.e. making an iso on the fly and burning it, if you disk IO is not well distributed due to slow filesystem or IO scheduler the disk will be corrupt. Make an iso and burn it to the disk. It's a good idea to have a fast filesystem and appropriate IO scheduler, and to not be doing something disk IO intensive during the burn, like copying lots of files.

H_TeXMeX_H offered some interesting suggestions, but they appear useful for command line burning. Does someone know if there are similar options or setting available for Brasero or K3b users? Do these apps support the use of a $HOME folder dot-something-RC file so that these setting are always available? (I said I was a newbie -- technical but new to too many details.)

~~~ 8d;-Dan

I have this problem intermittently on my laptop. I get 'bad burns' more often using media that's labeled for very high speeds (52x), even if I burn as slow as possible. Seems ok if I buy 24x media to burn on. Brand doesn't seem to matter in my case.

Go and have a look at /usr/share/doc/...HOWTO for toasting CD's and DVD's. If it's not there use your software installer to install the HOWTO package.

Use your software installer to make sure you have plenty of encoders and libraries like cdparanoia, growisofs etc.

Be aware that k3b unmounts the drive before toasting it. Tell k3b it's directory to find the cd/dvd toaster is at the device level, like /dev/sr0 or /dev/hdc and not soft links like /dev/cdrw or /dev/cdrom

that's my two bits worth. BTW, be nice to ppl who are trying to help you. Yelling at ppl is not going to win you any friends.

Please tell me when and where you caught me yelling at people.
If I ever did, I'm oh so sorry, but I'm not aware that I have done
this. I have rarely every written deliberate <flame> without the appropriate brackets </flame>. Again, please point out the problem
areas so that I might see how I was not paying propeer attention
to those who were kind enough to respond.

Confused,
~~~ 0;-/ Dan

@peterlowrie: I'm guessing you mean the bold questions the OP asked. Usually ALL CAPS is yelling, not bolding. At least that's the way I understand it. I think the OP bolded them to make them stand out, not to indicate shouting. Please correct me if I misunderstand.

Gee whizz, pardon me but I just felt your attitude was a bit coarse or flippant/contrary. It's difficult to raise an issue like this in the most positive manner, is it not. The written word does not have the added dimension of a face to look at. Perhaps we should all just shut-up and not communicate at all :-}

On a more important note: did the solutions I provided have any value?

:-) Peter

Not all optical recordable disc brands will work for every format. Some works better and others just does not work. Also the compatibility of brands for your drive also matters, so it is more of a trial-n-error process than recommending brand. I suggest try brand first by buying discs with one or three in the package. If it does not work, then you wasted less money. If it works, you can buy it in bulk.

Buying in bulk has its consequences. Usually the top and bottom of the discs in the stack will be bad because where they are stored in a warehouse. I do not think all warehouses are temperature controlled, so bulk will screw you more than you save. Recordable optical discs requires temperature controlled rooms or low temperatures to last long.

k3b does have advance options, but you may have to run k3b as root or sudo to access those options.

One thing that you did not say is if your optical drive reads discs. If it does not, you will then have to replace the drive. I suggest test the drive with music CD or DVD movie.

You can do anything while the optical drive is writing to the disc. You have to worry about how much throughput your hard drive can send at once on the worst conditions. Also you will have to worry about both the software and hardware cache. The hardware cache is what your optical drive contains. The software cache is what the program created in memory. The software might create the same amount of cache that your optical drive has, so it could be 2 megabytes. If you going to multi-task, I suggest set this software cache to 4 megabytes to 8 megabytes. Though for best results when writing to recordable optical disc, do not multi-task and let it do its job.


The difference of recordable optical disc speed is the amount of errors. The errors is caused by the wobbling of the disc. If the wobbling is a lot, so will be the errors. At high speed, the disc will be wobbling a lot compared to at slow speed. If you do not want errors, write at a slow speed.

The auto will pick any speed the drive is capable of and what ever the dye material is used for the recordable optical disc. The drive can read the quality of the dye and make changes.