DVD Burner Dirty?
 

Heya,

Hmmm - I have no idea what this means...

Burned a load of img DVDs and those just freeze when It ry to work them on my DVD player and now whenever I try to burn anything it tells me that the "Power Calibration Failed (Burner is Dirty)"

Any ideas what's happening and how can I fix this problem?

Thanks beforehand

Standard prescription is to isolate between media or burner faults by burning other brands, or burning the same discs in other drives.

However, I'll save you some effort by recommending that you replace your DVD drive. They're not that pricey nowadays :)

This is almost always the first sign of a failing DVD burner from my experience. There's probably nothing to be done other than just going out and getting a replacement.

I don't normally say 'it's broken -go buy a new one' very often but I've seen probably 100+ drives exhibit this at my previous job and completely die within the next month.

Well, that's good to know for me. I had this happen once recently. Nothing about the burner being dirty, and it worked fine the very next time. No problem with the DVD's either.

Thanks guys!

Good thing DVD burners are cheap... 2nd time a DVD burner dieing within a year <....<

Maybe your DVD player is the weak link. I mean, a 2nd DVD Burner in a year?

Not likely since he's getting power calibration issues in his DVD burning application.

Power calibration issues basically means the laser is not getting to a high enough wavelength to burn the disc. Reading a disc requires a longer (lower power) wavelength compared to burning a disc so usually a burner will fail to burn discs first then fail to read discs later on. In some cases this could actually be caused by a bad power supply but normally OS lockups or reboots will accompany a failed burn when this is the problem.

If you had bought the same brand drive twice it might be time to consider a different manufacturer.

You're right, of course. But xiaowei was suggesting problems with the DVD player instead of the DVD burner... :p

Hey,

Thanks for your replies... due to some issues - I won't bother with that guy's computer - so I'm very sorry for wasting your time :(

but hmmm I have yet another DVD issue here - (dun wanna spam the forum with more of my topics here)

So... well it happens now that I need my own DVD burner for a pretty OLD computer... (dun ask why - big problems)

So I'm not sure what to look for to know whether a certain DVD Burner is compatible with my motherboard or whatever it needs to be compatible with. I'll post any information on my system (whatever you guys would like)

Thanks beforehand

Optical drives either have PATA or SATA connectors. You can easily distinguish them through the size of the cabling.

SATA cables are quite thin compare two the wide PATA cabling. Keep in mind though that there are "rounded" PATA cables for optimized air flow. The connectors and jacks however already indicate the size of the cabling. So you might wanna take a look at the interface side of the device.

If the main connector is wide (see AT Attachment - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) then it's PATA. If not it's probably SATA: Serial ATA - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

If the computer is old then it won't have a SATA controller, you gonna have to use a PATA optical drive. If you really want to use a SATA device you still have the option to get a PCI SATA controller.

It's definitely PATA!

I don't really care much for upgrading... hmmm is it a problem if it's not SATA?

I'm not looking for something expensive - anything will do really since the computer is slow and personally I wouldn't want it to burn fast myself because it's old and it'll burn images a lot worse


So now since it's PATA - how do I go on selecting a compatible DVD Burner... I briefly went to Tigerdirect (not the best place but their site is pretty handy with the specs) and clicked on 3 burners... I didn't see PATA or SATA listed under specs (I'm a newbie sorry - chances are I might be looking in a wrong area)