Pioneer 106 produces strange noises with Ritek G04

[Gregg]

Hi,

I got my second Pioneer 106 f1.07 from Newegg.com /they were very fast/ and it produces strange noises in the beginning phase/initializing/ with some Riteks G04 unlike my first Pioneer 106 which I still own. The program gives me a write error but there's nothing burned on the disk and it burns OK at 2x on my SONY DRU 500AX. Some discs started burning regardless of the noises but failed to finalize when the noises came up again. This happened only to some of the discs from the same spindle. Couple of discs burned succesfully but there was that blurry ring in the middle of the discs which still played OK after that. Most of the discs burned at 4x without any problems. Any ideas what's going on?

[jtommyj]

What burning software ?

[Gregg]

RecordNow DX. Never had a single problem with it.

[jtommyj]

I have a Pioneer 104 and a Lite-on 411 and they both seem to make a strange kind of low noise ,kind of hard to describe but like the laser is turning on and burning in an area and getting deflected or something. Like a low scraping noise.But the Lite-On continues and makes a good disc and the Pioneer doesn't.

But the one thing I noticed about my Pioneer vs. the Lite-On is that it does exactly what you describe using any of these different burning programs. Nero, RecordNow. When I make an ISO image and burn the disc with Alcohol 120% or DVD Decrypter, it burns fine. If I burn it as a data disc in RecordNow sometimes it fails. Same goes for Nero as a DVD Video. But the Lite-On burns them fine

If I put the Pioneer in PIO mode though the whole disc burns. Maybe experiment and see if yours will burn in PIO. It could be your chipset drivers with the Pioneer. You don't list your motherboard in your computer details so I can't compare chipsets.I don't know why it would be different but it is.
Give it a shot and report back.

[Gregg]

A little update. When these noises are present /during initilaizing and finalizing/ the drive doesn't eject the disc after the job is aborted so I have to do it manually by pressing whatever that is through the tiny hole at the front and the tray comes out with the disc spinnig on it.
As I said this happens only to some of the discs /~10% so far / from the same spindle. Most of them burned OK some with a blurry ring in the middle /but play OK/. Some of the aborted discs were able to burn at 2x on my DRU500AX but some of them are not 'seen' by both drives after that. So far it looks like a bad media but could be the drive itself too. I got it from Newegg.com and it was very poorly packaged. Is it possible that the drive has been damaged during the shipping? By the way I burned successfuly Memorex 4x -R, BeAll 4x -R and Memorex 4x +R on the same drive /106/ without any problems.
Thank you for the advice I'll try that as well.

[AdamRA4]

My LiteOn has made a strange noise since I have had it. I bought it retail. It seems to work fine for anything though so I am not too worried about it. Sometimes unbalanced media can cause the disc to wobble. But if you use good media then this problem shouldnt really arise unless a bad one slips thru everyonce in a great while.

[zod5000]

holy crap man.. i've been having the same problem with my lg-4040b.

i bought 100 ridata ritek 4x dvd-r's from rima.com (the came in two 50 packs.)

anyways in any program i try to burn them with it gets stuck right at the lead-in. Nero won't get past thiis.. at least recordnow realizes somethings is wrong and can close itself down and call it a write error. Like you said nothing writes to the discs and the burn fine at 2x just not 4x.

as for the strange sound.. i get this ticking sound. i thought it was my burner.. but i tried some other riteks i had left over with a y's power label on them (weren't ridata's) and they burned fine. I also tried some maxell's from future shop and they worked fine.

I'm thinking maybe ridata (ritek) made a few bad batches of disks.. especially if the smae problem is happening on another type of burner.

I even reformatting my comptuer thinking i got a virus or something wierd happened to installed files.

oh well.. i'm just gonna have to burn through the rest of these at 2x which sucks

[falberni]

I think the noises you're all describing has something to do with the little balls they use to couter balance the disk to reduce vibration. I think most burners have some sort of a balancing system that uses very small balls.

[Xdreamer]

hmmm.......weird....I have a pioneer 106 and a Lite on 166/165, i have used Ritek's G04 4x from the get go, It burns them fine (knock on wood) @ 4x, I use DVD Decypter and CopyToDvd.

[Gregg]

I think the problem is with the discs because I tried several other types of discs /-&+/ and they burn OK at 4x. I was considering of returning the drive but it makes problems only with these Riteks. Actually the discs I'm talking about are from Rima as well. Maybe it's a batch of bad discs. I'm going to try to burn all of them and return the failed ones. So far the fail rate is around 20% which is quite unacceptable. I can swallow somehow 5 to 10% bad discs but 20% is too much.
Are there any chances these discs to damage the drive?