Okay, I've burned out three burners now...

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I had a Plextor PX-716a, installed it in my old computer. It worked fine for several months, then I put it in my new computer. Thereafter, it lasted about 3 months and then it died. Bought another one, and it died after only about a week. So, I decided to buy something other than a Plextor, so I got a new Lite-On SHM-165P6S. It lasted all of 2 days before it died today.

What the hell is going on? All three of them did the exact same thing: they locked up at 99% while burning a disc, and then from that point on no longer recognize anything you put in them. You put a disc in, the light blinks once after the drive closes, and then that's it. After that, it acts like "What? What disc?"

I have 3 other optical drives that still work fine, so I don't think it could be something the power supply is doing. Could it be my motherboard? How would it actually damage the drive? Again, the three other optical drives are fine (although all three of them are SCSI, not IDE). Oh, and the three burners were the only devices on the secondary IDE channel. There are two hard drives on the primary channel, and they're fine.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

-Jesse

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I should add that I tried firmware updates on all 3 drives, to no avail. I also ran the self-diagnostics test on both Plextor drives, and they both determined that the drive was dead.

Oh, and they don't read anything: blank CD's, blank DVD's, audio CD's, commercial DVD's, nothing.

-Jesse

[ebenton]

Are any of your remaining 3 optical drives burners, like a CD-only burner, or are they all just readers?
Since your working drives are SCSI, maybe its your ASPI, although Windows ASPI should work for both SCSI and ATAPI, so you wouldn't think SCSI would work if ATAPI doesn't. Anyway, it wouldn't hurt to Try ForceASPI Drivers or Nero ASPI Drivers.
Also. check out Bart's page about ASPI - http://www.nu2.nu/aspi/

[Soltaris]

Have you tried putting the 3 inoperable drives in a different machine? If they are indeed dead then I believe the issue still could be your power supply. As you stated each drive lasted a different amount of time with the longest going 6 months. The power supply could be sending out intermittant spikes, and because it's intermittant it's tough to be able to reproduce the same effect in a given amount of time in testing. Not only that but each drive may have different resistances to voltage issues due to their unique circuitry.

One other thing I can think of is the types of blanks you use. I suppose it's in the realm of possibility that the discs are damaging the drive. I'm not certain if it applies to the technology in optical drives but it's common knowledge that if a laser's light is reflected (either directly or through diffusion) back at the source optic you can cause permanent damage to the laser.

P.S. Other troubleshooting steps you could try include clearing NVS in your motherboard's bios. That could rule out corrupted NVRAM data.

And also booting to a Windows 98 startup disk (it has an oak technology cdrom driver) and then reading a normal data CD such as your Windows disc. Pay attention to the bootup screen to see which drive letter the burner gets and then try to do a directory on that drive once you get to the A: prompt. That could rule out an operating system or driver problem. Edit: sorry I just noticed you have SCSI drives. You'll need to load a DOS SCSI driver to successfully run this test.

[GKar]

Have you tried disconnecting everything but 1 hard disk (primary master) and 1 burner (secondary master) and see if you get any positive results? Disconnect your scsi also. Uninstall VIA/SIS/NVIDIA/INTEL IDE drivers, use default MS IDE drivers.

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Well, I think the drives are somehow actually being damaged or affected. Like I said, the Plextor drives failed their self-diag tests, which means that they were physically defective. That doesn't make any sense - how can something other than a power supply problem or improperly upgrading the firmware render a drive useless like that?

Here are the other three drives:

Plextor SCSI cd-rom
Plextor SCSI cd-rw
Pioneer SCSI dvd-rom

-Jesse

[stream]

Have you tried putting the 3 inoperable drives in a different machine? If they are indeed dead then I believe the issue still could be your power supply. As you stated each drive lasted a different amount of time with the longest going 6 months. The power supply could be sending out intermittant spikes, and because it's intermittant it's tough to be able to reproduce the same effect in a given amount of time in testing. Not only that but each drive may have different resistances to voltage issues due to their unique circuitry.

One other thing I can think of is the types of blanks you use. I suppose it's in the realm of possibility that the discs are damaging the drive. I'm not certain if it applies to the technology in optical drives but it's common knowledge that if a laser's light is reflected (either directly or through diffusion) back at the source optic you can cause permanent damage to the laser.

I used a different power rail when I installed the new Lite-On a couple days ago. So if the PSU were sending out power spikes, that means it's sending them on multiple power rails....so why wouldn't my other periphs be getting damaged?

And, I'm using the exact same media I've been using for about 3 years now on multiple burners with no problems - TDK DVD+R's and Fuji DVD+R's.

-Jesse

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Okay. Well, I installed ASPI on my system (it was apparently not installed before), and now the DVD burner is working fine. However, now it's asking me for drivers for my SCSI controller, and I can't seem to find them. I have a PCI SCSI card (Adaptec 2940, I think) that all 3 SCSI drives are connected to, but the win2k zip file that you download from Adaptec for the 2940 doesn't contain the 2940 drivers (grrrrrr).

-Jesse

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Yep, definitely works fine now. I was able to find the Adaptec SCSI controller adapter, so everything is back to normal.

I guess this means those two Plextor drives weren't really dead? That's so strange though, since they both failed their self-diag test (which the Plextor rep told me means that they're physically defective).

-Jesse

[ebenton]

They might have failed their self-tests because the software couldn't really comunicate with thedrives because of the lack of ASPI. Well, at least you got it fixed.

[stream]

They might have failed their self-tests because the software couldn't really comunicate with thedrives because of the lack of ASPI. Well, at least you got it fixed.

Well actually, the Plextor self-diag test is run with only the power supply connected to the drive. It's a totally independent test, and only determines the internal funcationality of the drive. Very strange.

-Jesse