Stubborn Drives

I am not able to use either of my drives for copying. I have a Plextor PXW1210A 12/10/32 CD-R/RW and Samsung TSH552B CD/DVD + - R/RW. I cannot use either drive using either Roxio Easy CD Creator 5.0 Platinum or Nero 6.0 without getting destination disk read errors. I uninstalled/reinstalled Roxio. Nero did not even install correctly, but I corrected the errors using Norton Windoctor and now the program works. I had been using (cheap) Durabrand CD-R media and bought a pack of Maxell CD-R media with no change. I have barely used the DVD writer, but the CD drive used to work fine. I wonder: Has Microsoft or some other vendor snuck in an "update" to disable my drives and prevent me from using them for copying and backup. I have barely used the DVD writer, but the CD drive used to work fine. As sneaky and dirty as the RIAA and MPAA and their members have become, i.e: Sony rootkit debacle, that would not surprise me.

To answer the second question first, no.

By copying do you mean directly from one drive to the other?
Do the drives work creating an iso first then burning the copy (one drive for both processes)?
If the above works, does it work with both drives?
Did the problem suddenly occur?
Was anything coincident with the problem starting?
Which is typically the destination drive?
Have you tried better quality media?
If just one drive is faulty and cannot read, would that explain the problem? Drives can just fail due to laser problems etc.

Starman*

By copying do you mean directly from one drive to the other?

Yeah, from DVD to CD drive.

Do the drives work creating an iso first then burning the copy (one drive for both processes)?
If the above works, does it work with both drives?

I don't think that either makes an image before burning.

Did the problem suddenly occur?

I don't really remember when I first noticed it.
I do remember recently copying to CD some pictures from Kodak Easy Share that I had downloaded from my camera with no problem. I had no reason to backup/archive those pictures to DVD b/c at aroung 500 megs, it would have basically been a waste of a DVD unless copied as a multisession. So, when I am trying to copy from 1 drive to another is when the problem occurs.

Was anything coincident with the problem starting?

No other hardware or software errors that I know of.

Which is typically the destination drive?

CD-R/RW


Have you tried better quality media?

AFAIK, Maxell or Memorex is about the best there is, so yeah, already tried that.

If just one drive is faulty and cannot read, would that explain the problem?

No problems reading from either drive, just can't burn.

Drives can just fail due to laser problems etc.

If there were problems with the laser, the drives would have trouble reading as well as writing, and the odds of that type problem occuring in both drives at once are, though possible, very slim.

You mentioned copyright protection in your original post. I answered no to "updates". However the basic digital protection that has been around for years is there so you cannot copy a commercial dvd directly without decrypting. Copy protection avoidance is outside the scope of this forum.

Assuming you are talking about non-protected disks, I did not word Qu 2 very well. What I really meant was have you tried creating an iso first then burning that on to the second disk. This method would only require one drive but it will show if the basic burning mechanism is OK.

I never record disk-to-disk so I've no experience there. I would try limiting the speed of the recording drive to see if it is either a data rate issue or the drive does not work well at max speed.

If your CD drive is a few years old, they do tend to fail over time.

Read and write processes are quite different so you can have issues with one and not the other.

Starman*