Question about the Sony DRU-500A

[Peter]

I just got this new promising drive and I tried to author a dvd and burn it with DVD Decrypter, following the guide on this site.
I got a working DVD, which my Pioneer DVD player reads, but if you burn the program shows the write retries and it's incredible high, like 500 or 600 retries. I used the DVD which came with the drive, the Sony DVD+RW.
I also tried a Nashua DVD-R at 1-speed, but I got a coaster.

Is this very high number of retries because of the program or the burner?

I have a raid system, which is fast enough to provide data, the drive is master on a single IDE interface and is set to ultra DMA. I didn't use other programs at the same time.

Also when burning a DVD the orange light which shows it's burning is not burning continuous, but it blinks. With my CD burner, it burns continious. Is this normal for the Sony DRU-500A? or should it burn continious when burning a DVD?

I hope someone can give me answers,

thanks

[harrymj3]

Yes, the light blinks on the Sony drive when it is working properly. I have 2 Pioneer drives 103 and 104 and I like then both better than the Sony. But in all fairness the Pioneers are in XP machines and the Sony is in a ME machine. Probably not a fair comparison. ........ That's my 2 cents worth. ............ Good luck .......... Harrymj3

[ghoster]

i have to sony DRU-500A and i am running XP. i use DVD Decrypter for copying and i haven't had any retries will burning i have use dvd-r and dvd+rw to burn with and they are worked perfectly. not sure what your problem is.

[DigiToast]

I havn't seen any of these high retry problems on my system. The setup is pretty much the same as yours:

- 2xHDD in RAID0 on a dedicated PCI controller, 1 IDE channel per disk.
- DRU500A with UDMA enabled as a single drive on an onboard (mainboard) IDE channel.
- Running XP SP1
- Adaptec ASPI 4.60 (1021).. havn't tried using any of the newer 4.7x drivers yet

The orange light on my drive also blinks when writing to a disc..

My suggestions would be to try using some of the discs that have been confirmed to work with the drive. I originally had write problems with Memorex media, but now I'm using TDKs and have not had any problems with them at 2x write speeds. If that doesn't work, then I'd suggest looking at drivers and such.. I have no problems writing -Rs at 2x and +RWs at 2.5x in the background while I browse the web and do other such stuff..