LiteOn LDW-411 fine on DVD+R, won't write to DVD+RW

[yumagah]

I just picked up one of those cheapo LDW-411's being sold out for fiftysome bucks. I've mounted it in an external USB 2.0 enclosure and tested on 3 pc's. It plays back ok, it rips ISO images ok, it records to +R disks just fine, but it will not recognise either the SONY or Fujifilm +RW disks I have tried in it. It has the latest firmware FS0J, so that isn't the problem. Haven't tried any -R or -RW disks in it yet. Has anyone else had trouble using RW disks on this drive? The reviews of it in the DVD recorders section either say it's great or it sucks. But mine only half sucks. The Fuji and SONY RW disks both work fine in a HP writer too. This sounds like a firmware problem if I didn't know better.

[yumagah]

Well if this don't beat everything! My LiteOn 411S that refuses to recognize SONY DVD+RW disks - it works on SONY DVD-RW disks! Everything I've seen on the web so far says that this drive works poorly on -R/RW disks, so I thought maybe I was wasting my money. But Target store had a 2-pack marked down to seven bucks, so I figured it was worth it to test. It only wrote at 1x, but nowhere on the package do I see anythign about speed, so I think it may be old 1x disks.
BTW, the Sony +RW disks that won't work are identified as RICOH. Funny because most of the +R disks that do work are also RICOH.

[yumagah]

Curiouser and curiouser. The DVD+RW disk that the drive would not recognize as recordable, it now writes to and erases with no problems. They write at 4x too, much quicker than the -RW disks which take an hour. Meanwhile the DVD-RW disk has been successfully written and erased a couple of times, but often gives an immediate error when trying to write to it. Some software works better than others, CloneDVD 2 works more consistently than Copy2DVD or Nero or DdDecrypter, all of which give errors on the -RW disk.

[QuaiBoy]

Firmware update. Immediately.
Get it here. Great resource for most writers.

You have the latest, so try an earlier version. One at a time.

Best of Luck,
-Evan-

[yumagah]

The drive already has FS0J. I don't think I wanna mess with flashing it to a 811. I don't know any firmware more up to date than FS0J.

[yumagah]

The drive already has FS0J. I don't think I wanna mess with flashing it to a 811. I don't know any firmware more up to date than FS0J.

Actually what I meant to say was that after exchanging the messed up disks at the store, I'm having better luck with Nero on the new disks.

[johns0]

If you have a nforce2 motherbaord with nforce ide drivers installed then that can give you problem,not sure about external drives though,list your system specs to see if thats the case,hard to help without knowing any details.

[yumagah]

Since the drive is an external, I have used it on more than one system. But the problem is pretty much solved. I think it came from minor issues with firmware FS0J, especially trying to use Copy2DVD ver. 3. I don't recommend this program with any RW disks. Now that I am using Nero 6.3 and CloneDVD 2 only, no problems so far. There does seem to be an issue burning ISO images to -RW disks; images that fill up a whole +R disk will not fit and the burn crashes right away. In some cases I can burn the loose files as a data disk, and despite warnings that it may not be compatible, the -rw disk plays in 4 of 4 standalone players I've tested.
My conclusion is the +RW format is more reliable than the -RW. The early problem with the drive not seeing them as writeable seems to be limited to Roxio 5.3, Copy2DVD, and some other older version software. Nero 6.3 work with +RW disks every time.
Hopefully this ends the thread.