Sony dru500a 4x burning: observations

[hotwings]

Just some observations I thought might be useful to someone out there having trouble burning at 4x with the dru500a, it might or might not be helpful depending on your situation:

Sony DRU500a firmware version 2.0f. Burning prog: Nero 5.5.10.50

1)This has been mentioned before, but needs repeating, make sure you try out your initial 4x burns with reputable media. In my case I first tried out tdk's 4x +rs without success, then some Memorex 4x rs(yeah, not so reputable I know, but i had to try 4x rs to be sure it wasn't the medias fault), without success as well.

2)Try making the DRU the one and only drive on and eide channel connected directly to the motherboard. In my case my drive was configured as the master drive, but was connected via an ata 100 card and therein was my problem. I am still not quite sure what the underlying problem is, but it seems there was some kind of 'bottlenecking' of the data being sent to the dvd drive. If you burn with a program like nero and notice that your drive's physical buffer % fluctuates frequently and rapidly from say 10 to upwards of 90%, you might want to look into your eide connection. The burns where limited to a little less than 2x.

3) Sony recommends an 80 pin eide cable. I have no comment on this.

4) I noticed that I usually get coasters with my Memorex 4x rs most frequently when my computer has been on for a while and has been bogged down with running programs and accessing ram and virtual memory and etc... Rebooting your computer wouldn't hurt if you are getting write errors. Just a thought..

5) I am not one to argue for or against DVD-R or +R, but the TDK +rs work like a charm. I am waiting for my meritline dvd-r sampler to draw further conclusions. Most likely it is the tdk quality rather than +r versus r. Although the leadin for the memorex rs takes a minute to complete whereas the tdk +rs do it in 30 seconds, just an observation.

6) The tdk +rs write a full disc in about 15 min and 15 secs. My memorex burns are kind of weird in that they obviously burn at 4x for about 88% of the disc, but approximately the last 12% burn at 2x, thus taking about 19 minutes per disc. I will have a better idea after trying out the dvd sampler.

(finally, i know that there has been stuff posted about this already, but I just wanted to put this down just in case it might help someone out there.)

[hotwings]

. Just burnt some "High Quality" dvds rated 1-4x at 4x. Great because I got them on the cheap for $.89 a piece (100 discs), but they're selling now for $.85 on meritline. At that price I figured that if they burnt only at 2x I could live with it, and if they burnt at 4x I'd eat my cake and have it. Guess I lucked out. Don't know about their longevity, but the stuff I'm burning at 4x is not stuff I want to keep for upwards of 10 yrs anyway... Time to try out the 4x samplers...

edited to add: You get what you pay for . After 20+ burns w/ the high qual media, I conclude that they are just to inconsistent, at least as far as the dru goes. Coasters, bad files, and 4x burning that drops to 2x, next time I'll just anty up and get the good stuff...