I have a Memorex 52x CD-RW drive, and when i try to write a cd using cdrecord, the drive will spin up really fast and write the first track. When it's done, it spins all the way down, then it spins up again, but doesn't write, then it spins down again, spins up again and still doesn't write, then spins down, then spins up and finally writes the next track. It does this for every track, eventually (after a few tracks) aborting the write. I have tried doing fs=8m, i've put timeout=120, i've set speed=40, did driveropts=forcespeed and driveropts=burnfree and it still doesn't work. Do i just have a bad drive, or am i doing something wrong?

Are you sure the CD-R will accept writing at that speed?

You can see the error messages and post them if you burn from the command line.

# CD burning info
Is it configured and what is the device? Command this to find out:
cdrecord -scanbus
Adding an IDE CD-Writer to Linux
CD Writing HOWTO
Burning CDs on Linux
# Burn an ISO to disk
cdrecord -v speed=<burning speed> dev=<your device> /path/to/foo.iso
# Burn from disk to disk
cdrecord -v dev=<your device> speed=<burning speed> -isosize /dev/cdrom
# Generate an ISO from a directory.
mkisofs -Jr -o foo.iso /path/to/directory
mkisofs -vrTJUV "Label" -o foo.iso /path/to/directory
# Generate an ISO from a CD
dd if=/dev/cdrom of=foo.iso
Linux MP3 CD Burning mini-HOWTO
# Convert mp3 to wav with lame
for i in *.mp3; do lame --decode $i `basename $i .mp3`.wav; done
# Burn a CD from wav files
cdrecord -v -audio -pad speed=<burning speed> dev=<your device> /path/to/*.wav
# Erase a CDRW
cdrecord -v dev=<your device> speed=<burning speed> blank=fast

Yeah, the CD-R should handle up to 40x. The main point of my post is, this is a new CD-RW drive, and i've been able to burn just fine on the other drives, one of which was 52x. this is the only drive that spins up and down like i described. I want to make it stop doing that. Is this a hardware thing or what? There was one time, when it wrote a short track, that it just continued on the the next track without any weird spinning up and down things, which is what i want it to do with all the tracks.

Any hints in the log (/var/log/messages)?

# Watch error messages as they happen (sysklog needed)
as root, tail -f /var/log/messages (shows last 10 lines, use a number in front of f for more lines)

Hmmm, no i don't see anything except for the X-Windows startup messages at the end of /var/log/messages. I tried writing a few more CDs, and no matter what options i put, i generally got the same thing. I finally got it to write once, but then it wouldn't write again with those same options. Here's the output from the time with those options:

$cdrecord dev=0,0,0 speed=40 fs=8m timeout=60 -v -pad -audio -swab -dao *

Cdrecord 2.0 (i686-pc-linux-gnu) Copyright (C) 1995-2002 Jörg Schilling
TOC Type: 0 = CD-DA
scsidev: '0,0,0'
scsibus: 0 target: 0 lun: 0
Linux sg driver version: 3.1.24
Using libscg version 'schily-0.7'
atapi: 1
Device type : Removable CD-ROM
Version : 0
Response Format: 2
Capabilities :
Vendor_info : 'Memorex '
Identifikation : '52MAXX 2452AJ '
Revision : '6WS2'
Device seems to be: Generic mmc CD-RW.
Using generic SCSI-3/mmc CD-R driver (mmc_cdr).
Driver flags : MMC-3 SWABAUDIO BURNFREE FORCESPEED
Supported modes: TAO PACKET SAO SAO/R96P SAO/R96R RAW/R16 RAW/R96P RAW/R96R
Drive buf size : 1422080 = 1388 KB
FIFO size : 8388608 = 8192 KB
Track 01: audio 86 MB (08:31.48) no preemp pad
Track 02: audio 86 MB (08:31.48) no preemp pad
Track 03: audio 39 MB (03:56.28) no preemp pad
Track 04: audio 39 MB (03:56.28) no preemp pad
Track 05: audio 31 MB (03:09.01) no preemp pad
Track 06: audio 46 MB (04:38.26) no preemp pad
Track 07: audio 47 MB (04:42.91) no preemp pad
Track 08: audio 34 MB (03:22.10) no preemp pad
Track 09: audio 24 MB (02:28.23) no preemp pad
Track 10: audio 25 MB (02:33.15) no preemp pad
Total size: 462 MB (45:49.32) = 206199 sectors
Lout start: 462 MB (45:51/24) = 206199 sectors
Current Secsize: 2048
ATIP info from disk:
Indicated writing power: 5
Is not unrestricted
Is not erasable
Disk sub type: Medium Type A, high Beta category (A+) (3)
ATIP start of lead in: -11634 (97:26/66)
ATIP start of lead out: 359846 (79:59/71)
Disk type: Short strategy type (Phthalocyanine or similar)
Manuf. index: 3
Manufacturer: CMC Magnetics Corporation
Blocks total: 359846 Blocks current: 359846 Blocks remaining: 153647
Forcespeed is OFF.
Starting to write CD/DVD at speed 40 in real SAO mode for single session.
Last chance to quit, starting real write 0 seconds. Operation starts.
Waiting for reader process to fill input buffer ... input buffer ready.
BURN-Free is OFF.
Performing OPC...
cdrecord: Input/output error. send opc: scsi sendcmd: cmd timeout after 200.112 (200) s
CDB: 54 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
cmd finished after 200.112s timeout 200s
cdrecord: OPC failed.
Writing time: 202.753s
cdrecord: fifo had 128 puts and 0 gets.
cdrecord: fifo was 0 times empty and 0 times full, min fill was 100%.