sony dru 530a - some recomendations would be really helpful!

[Michael Coates]

hi guys, just wondered if anyone out there could give me a quick recomendations on media for this burner and nero - i've read up on it here and it seems i've made a bad investment! i can't beign to tell you how much money i've wasted trying different discs fro this machine to burn and then tell me is unreadable afterwards!

it seems to be a very poor burner and i won't be making the mistake of not looking here first again - however i cannot buy another just yet so i need a solution. i have found an older ridisc with the g03 dye that seems to work perfectly, i've tried these discs in loads of machine and never had a problem - the sony drive even recognises it! the only problem is it only burns at 2x which is rather slow really. i found 1 disc that gives good results at 4x - it's a datasafe disc with the g04 dye - unfortunately some parts of the disc skip a bit in some dvd players - like they weren't burned correctly and this is causing me several problems.

my pc is amd athlon 1600 with 256mb of ddr ram - one thing i have noticed is when burning at 4x speed the user read buffer goes down to 0 a couple of times which i think may well be the reason that some dvd players have trouble with - i'm burning the datasafe at 2x now and sending it away to my friend who has had trouble to see if it works ok this time round - if it does i can be certain that it's the user read issue that's giving me problems.

is my pc out of date already? can it simply not handle 4x dvd burning?

any help would be greatly appreciated - if i can't find a solution is back to 2x for me!

cheers for reading!
mik x

[MAXIMUS01CAN]

I don't have experience with the 530A's, but I bought a 510a going on a couple years ago now and it hasn't made a single coaster yet on it's own.......I've made a couple of my doing but that's another story. Just wondering if you've upgraded your firmware??? to burn at the faster speeds. If not you might want to try going here http://sony.storagesupport.com/dvdrw/dru530adwn.htm and trying to download the firmware and start over again. I've had great luck with Ridata stuff. I did try using the +R media to begin with, but found it stuck and shook around after burning so I went with the -R media and from there on in it's been smooth sailing. As long as you followed the installation guides to a "T" and try upgrading your firmware. I can't figure out why you'd be having those kind of problems. Anyway, worth a shot and hopefully it'll be the fix for you.

Good Luck,
Max

[Michael Coates]

thanks for the reply - i think the datasafe discs are working well at 2x - so it's really a 4x problem - i guess my pc isn't up to it? 256mb ddr ram and 1600 amd athlon - must upgrade to 512mb of ram i guess.

i always use -r discs now. an di'll continue to burn at 2x until i get more memory adn then i'll try again!

ta mate,
mik x

[Michael Coates]

shit forget to mention - i am using hte latest firmware yes and i installed it correctly!

thanks again
mik x

[B2D327]

I'm using the 530-a on an 800mhz p3 and the only discs I've had problems with were hp dvd+r 4x. I've had good sucess burning to TDKs, Riteks and Sonys. I also use Nero and it gave me problems when I first installed a corrupt version. I used the Nero clean tool and reinstalled the software directly from their website and haven't had a coaster since.

[Michael Coates]

how much memory do you have? i have a proper version of nero 6 that came with the burner but i'll try the clean tool - thanks.

like i said the discs that dont work well are when the user read buffer goes down to zero during burning - and this always happens during 4x burning but never during 2x burning - i don't know else to try except for mroe memory!

thanks for replying mate
mik x

[handyguy]

https://www.videohelp.com/dvdwriters

I use Accus, dirt cheap at Meritline

[SaSi]

If the buffer indicator is going to 0 while recording at 4x, there are some things you need to check. The PC itself is not out of date in terms of succesfully recording at high speeds. No CPU power is actually needed - just disk bandwidth.

Check that the disk where you hold the VIDEO_TS folder for recording is not highly fragmented. If it is, have the PC defragment the disk overnight.

Check that the IO mode for both the disks and the DVDRW are set to MultiWord UDMA mode. If it's not and it is set to PIO Mode only, it impairs IO performance

Check that the cables connecting both the disks and the DVDRW are 80 connector versions. This will enable the IDE controller to go beyond 66MBPS to 100MBPS. Remember, 100MBPS is 10 Mbyte per sec (approx) and recording at 4x is more or less 6Mbyte per sec. If the source disk and the DVDRW are on the same IDE channel, you can marginally have 4x recording.

Also, in terms of media, I have found that TDK media seem to be the most reliable. -R TDK seem not to agree with my Sony but +R media work fine. I was using -R for compatibility with some DVDPlayers and DVDROM drives, but +R is ok for modern players and they get recorded at 4x.

The buffer underrun protection can cause problems with DVDplayers. I have recorded a 8x disk at 8x constantly draining the buffer (by stressing the source HD) and Nero reported that buffer underrun was avoided 12 times! The disk was perfectly playable on my PC, perfectly playable on one DVD player but locked up periodically on another (needed FF to be pressed to skip over some spots).

Finally - I don't know your PC configuration in terms of disks - for trouble free DVD recording at high speeds, consider adding a new, fast, large HD. Use a separate IDE channel for it - if possible - from the one you use for the DVDRW and it will significantly improve performance and reduce problems.