How Does Overburning Damage A Drive?

[DivXExpert]

I have heard alot alot of, "Overburning can damage a drive". But please, tell me where the actuall destruction is going on. I also hear that some drives get damged, and others don't. I have a LG CD-RW CED-8083B.

I have only overburned once. And it didn't seem to cause a problem, but I don't want to ruin my drive.

[MOVIEGEEK]

If you use 90/99min CD-R you're o.k as long as your drive supoorts them.
Look to the left in "CD Writers" for compatibility.

[billson]

i was just thinking about this too because i overburned a cd with nero and a lite-on @ 32X the other day and it seemed to struggle at the end of the disc (stayed on 100% complete for about 5-10 seconds longer than usual and sounded like it was searching/spinning!?). Eventually it finished burning and the movie plays fine in my comp and my magnavox - but i wont do it again if its damaging the drive.


i just realised this is in the dvd writers forum which makes my post irrelevent

[DivXExpert]

So what happens to damage the drive? What is being destroyed? How? Why?

My drive supports 99min overburning.

How is it different from other drives?

[sterno]

I see the dire warnings in programs like Nero about damage to drives, but I have never heard of a drive being damaged in a way that could be linked to overburning. Some drives and some discs may have trouble at the very outer edge of the disc, but it's usually just that the drive has trouble keeping the laser aligned properly at higher speeds.

[LanEvo7]

I think manufactures just put the warning there so if something does happen, you can't blame them.

[tgpo]

Overburning uses the added space of burning in Mode 2. In this mode there is no error-correction, thus the space that typically would hold that is up for grabs. Most software doesn't want you to use that added space, but by overburning you move some data into that area. I've heard report of people getting 805mb on a 700mb Disk. THis is because this person used 105mb of the error-correction area. I personally have never heard a report of overburning harming a drive. The resone most likely that you drive stayed at 100% for so long is becaue it was only counting up to the 700mb mark, and didn't include the overburned area.

[mats.hogberg]

It's like those Child safety stickers that toys manufacturers stick on everything they ship. The worst I've seen was this: "Not for children under 3 years of age. Contains small parts." On a full size soccer ball.

/Mats

[DivXExpert]

Thanks guys.

[DivXExpert]

do any of you overburn often?

[tgpo]

I do every once in a while.

[defense]

I've heard report of people getting 805mb on a 700mb Disk

And i'd be one of those people. DivXpert, I can tell you first hand that I have NEVER made a SVCD WITHOUT overburning. I used every damn centimeter of space on my CDR's and without ANY COMPLICATIONS I might add. At that time I had a Philips CD burner. I have since given that to a friend and now have my "lawfully wedded" Sony DRU500AX.

-This topic actually reminds me of something I posted recently regarding "sharpies." Throughout the post some people mentioned that Sharpies can actually "leak" through the disks after a year or so and cause them to not be readable. I got a good laugh out of it, but someone was adament it was serious, so I asked them to post a link showing ANY legit information on that. I never saw a link posted, while several others have said they have been marking disks for years and never had an issue.

I believe it's also like the "disabling" of DMA when updating Sony Firmware for their burners. I sincerely doubt disabling DMA is necessary, and most people don't bother reading that crap and just flash their drive anyway. I think if ONE person says they can attribute it to DMA, THEN SONY puts that there on their site as a precaution. Nothing to worry about, but they are just trying to cover themselves.

I can go on and on...bottom line to all this...OVERBURN BABY OVERBURN!!! HAHAHAAAAAAA

[sterno]

Overburning uses the added space of burning in Mode 2. In this mode there is no error-correction, thus the space that typically would hold that is up for grabs. Most software doesn't want you to use that added space, but by overburning you move some data into that area. I've heard report of people getting 805mb on a 700mb Disk.

No, that is not overburning. There are two ways of putting information on a CD. One is the standard data way which gives you about 650/700MB on a disc with lots of error correction because flipping a bit from 0 to 1 is a really big deal to a computer. The other is the standard audio way (mode2/form2, which is also used for (S)VCD) which doesn't have all that because you're not likely to hear small errors, and that way gives you around 740/800MB per disc. 700MB plus error correction or 800MB without, either way it comes out to the same amount of data (just under 80 minutes worth). As I recall an 805MB (S)VCD disc image comes out to almost exactly 80 minutes.

You can overburn data, you can overburn audio or VCD, or you could just write garbage data straight to the disc and overburn. It doesn't matter what you're writing or how you're writing it, what matters is that you're writing past the rated capacity of the disc. Burning a CD writes some information at the start of the disc, one or more tracks, and some information at the end of the disc. When you overburn you write data in to some of the space reserved for that other information. Normally there is plenty of extra space at the end, so you can get another 1-3 minutes capacity. That's not enough to be worthwhile for data, but sometimes it's enough to save having to swap CDs for audio or video.