Is my drive about to die?

[Coluph]

I have two drives in my system, one is an older LG 4010 2x drive..still works perfectly, even with new media, the other is an LG 4020 8x, which is showing signs of problems. To be fair the 4020 drive has probably seen alot more use than the other one.

What is happening, is often the drive will start its burn process and be working away, but the drive will just appear to lock up. The software stops responding, and the drive will not quit what it is doing, just spins the disk and flashes the light as if it was still burning. Eject function won't work until the drive has been powered off, and reset. The only way to get it to stop is to shut down the computer and reboot. The other drive using the same software never does this. I've tried it in both Nero and Deep Burner, and with different types of media, so I'm suspecting its the drive.

Is this a sign that the drive is about to die? It doesn't always do this but its becoming unreliable and I've been using my slower drive more often lately, which just takes forever.

If its simply a reinstall windows thing I'll do it, but I don't want to spend all day doing that if its the drive itself that is the problem

Any ideas?

[Coluph]

Ends up I'm just going to replace the drive and not risk the chance of getting bad disks. Found an 18x samsung for $35

[Coluph]

Strangely enough, my new drive does the same thing, and does in on my pre-release install of Vista as well (allthoguh Nero won't even run in vista, nor will deep burner, and the Vista DVD writing program crashes when you try to put files into it)

I guess its time to wipe out windows and start over....or maybe I'll try linux :P

[redwudz]

What's your Nero burning log show? You can post a copy of it here, just remember to remove the serial number at the top. That log often shows what the problem is.

You can also try ImgBurn as it seems to work well with most any burners.

And by the way, you can edit your original topic to add further comments instead of bumping with additional posts.