On Wednesday 30 November 2005 10:16 pm, Randall R Schulz wrote:
Hi,
<snip>
Hda is a Sony DRU-720A dual-layer writer, hdc is an older Sony DRU-510A single-layer writer (both are capable of reading dual-layer media). Both are IDE drives configured as masters of the two separate IDE buses of my mainboard. There are no slaves on those buses and all other mass storage is on SCSI.
How are these drives jumpered? Master/slave/cable-select and is the IDE cable a dual or single drive type. If its a dual drive cable is the drive plugged into the end of the cable? Try switching the master/cable-select jumper even if it is jumpered as the master device on the end of the cable. This is very IDE controller and system BIOS dependent. I have seen IDE devices work and then fail until the master/slave/cable-select jumper was changed to the other way. They haven't failed after that.
It seems very odd that while no error was reported, reading stopped on hda after 4.3 GB while hdc when the full 8.5 GB. One might suppose that hda couldn't handle the layer switch yet reported no error when it should have done so.
Another oddity I noticed when conducting these experiments was high CPU usage when accessing hda. It turns out its DMA had gotten turned off somehow. I reenabled it and ran the test again. Aside from going about twice as fast, nothing changed.
I was on a roll yesterday with recommending www.CDFreaks.com for CD/DVD drive firmware updates. It is worth your time to check your drives there.
Has anybody seen symptoms like this? Can you shed any light on what might have happened to the malfunctioning drive to account for these peculiar symptoms?
Similar issues. Turned out to be CD/DVD drive firmware and/or bad media. Where was the media burned that fails in this drive? Was it burned in this drive?
Thanks.
Randall Schulz
Kevan might be right about the laser getting out of alignment. I have never seen that happen though to a CD/DVD drive. Power supply or other electronics on the device usually dies before that happens in my experience. Stan