I think my DVD writer is foobarred
Community Forums/General Help/I think my DVD writer is foobarred
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| Just trying backing up some stuff to DVD and all I've succeeded in doing is manufacturing a nice set of four coasters. Its an LG GS22NS40, about three years old, and I've updated the firmware to the latest version but that didn't make any difference. The error I'm getting is "tracking servo failure" or something. Is that as terminal as it sounds? |
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| Sounds really bad. Maybe only a bad contact somewhere, but when you see how cheap these things are today, almost not worth the troubles when you open it. More often I experienced CD failures in DVD devices, both, CD writing and reading. This is because they have a seperate CD laser that is there for compatibility purposes, but often is of low Quality as well as broken after a year or so. I had a drive that stopped reading the WinXP install disk, saying some "files are corrupt". Before somebody is going to throw the disk out of the window, test it with a diffrent drive. "tracking servo failure" seems to be something else tho, but most likely hardware failure too. |
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| It sounds like either a broken drive or broken media. If you have some other DVDs around, try them. |
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| It soes sound like a hardware failure... DVD burners have come down tremendously in price over the past couple of years -- you can get them for as little as $15.99 on newegg now... |
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| Sounds like the servo motor used to move the read/write head is buggered. Time for a new one, methinks. |
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| TSF means that the DVD player cannot track the groove on the DVD. I've read it is usually caused by using cheaper DVD's. But it could also be caused by incompatibility between the drive and the DVD. Try burning at a slower speed, or using a different brand of DVD. Last edited 2011 |
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| I'm not on that PC at the moment, but would I be right in thinking that if I were to check if it can *read* CD/DVDs, that might be an indicator of whether its a media problem or a hardware one? |
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| would I be right in thinking that if I were to check if it can *read* CD/DVDs, that might be an indicator of whether its a media problem or a hardware one? No, there's a separate laser for reading and writing in burners. You could try writing at the slowest write speed and ideally on good quality media, if it still fails then it's probably going to the electronic emporium in the sky. Although it might be possible to open it up and clean it out, but my experiments in this department have almost always ended up with lots of bits of a dvd burner that don't work. |
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| Well, think I'll just quit making any more coasters and buy a new one since they seem to start from under £12 these days. Any recommended brands? My 'dead' one is LG but I'd probably go back to LiteOn as I've never had a single problem with them in the past. |
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| Hitachi, Sony and NEC are usually good, I think sometimes it's just luck. |
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| I had the same drive and the same problem. The final death of the drive occurred within about a month. I've only owned the one LG drive, but I've had three Lite-On drives fail out of the three I've owned so I'm somewhat leery of the brand. Otherwise, I think most of the major manufacturers are probably pretty close. Last edited 2011 |
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| I've purchased 6 or 7 LiteOn drives myself over the years, and every single one of them is still working withing problems. As they say: your mileage may vary. |
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| Just thought I might point out that the correct term is FUBAR... F'd Up Beyond All Recognition FUBAR :) |
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| Well, today my PC crashed. Then, it wouldn't reboot. It was detecting the hard drive, and would boot so far, then stop. So I did some digging, and discovered that both of the SATA cables had become slightly (by about 1mm) displaced when I moved my PC recently. Refitted them, PC started first time, burned two DVDs with no problems at all. I reckon its my cheap crappy SATA cables that have been causing the writer issues. They're the cheap red ones and they simply drop off the SATA connector if you do little more than look at them, so I've just ordered some better ones with retaining clips to stop them falling off the motherboard again. Lucky really as I went to PC World for a new drive today, but they wanted over £30 for the only model they had in stock - which is identical to the one I've already got! Oh, and I went to PC World's website to price up new SATA cables. This one was out of stock. But check out their alternative recommendation (click the thumbnail to make it bigger). Wonder what data transfer rate I'd get with that. :) Last edited 2011 |
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| You try e-buyer? They're pretty good with prices :) And i've never personally had any problems with any of my LG stuff. Just yer luck I suppose :) Glad it wasn't the hardware though! http://www.ebuyer.com/search?q=sata+cable&x=0&y=0 Last edited 2011 |
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| Ta Ross, but I got a pair of SATA leads off eBay (from a seller I've used before) for £1.79 each. The locking variety, too. |
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| Ah, cool. I've always found SATA leads to be a bit on the flimsy side... |
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