Do CD Writers "burn out"?

[bganthis]

I bought a SONY CRX 175E about 2 months ago. I have burned about 500 or so DATA CD ROMs so far. Just as of today I have had problems getting it to burn a DATA CD ROM. It does the TOC first as usual but hangs at 100% on the TOC and does NOT continue. Then gives me an error regarding the CD writer itself.

My question is. Do burners tend to wear out after X number of CDs normally? Or should it last a lifetime?

Hmmm

thanks for you help guys.

[boss]

are you using nero? because my cd and dvd burners sometimes hang at 100% as well. if i try the discs however- they usually work fine. it might be a bug with nero because it is very slow to say the disc is completed after it gets to 100% and sometimes as i've said it hangs. anyone know why?

[Kdiddy]

Do burners tend to wear out after X number of CDs normally? Or should it last a lifetime?

ooo cmon, you really didn't ask this did you?? You know nothing last forever. Especially anything mechanical related, yes all burners wear out. Just a matter of when. List of my burners over the years.

Mitsumi 4x8: 4 years & counting
Ricoh 4x4x10: Dead after 2.5 years of "normal" use (about 10 burns a month)
Memorex 4x4x10: Dead after 2 months of normal use, return for money back.
NEC 8x4x24: 1.5 years, catch it on a good day, its real picky about certain CDRs (heavy use)
Pacific Digital 24x10x32: 2 months, still going strong under heavy use.

[Douglesh]

Yeh i bought my CRX120E about 3.5 years ago, and it died on me about a month ago, i mustve burner abhout 1500 CD's off it.

[Known]

The mech may start to wear, the internal gearing warms up during use, moves back and forth making the head positioning not quite as accurate as it used to be, it's hardly noticable but it does happen.

The biggest killer of optical pickups are dust and smoke, there's nothing really you can do short of sealing it all in an intrinsically clean box which defeats the point, as soon as you use a CD you've let dust in. Smoke on the other hand is pure evil on optical gear, especially cigarette smoke. You can't see it but there'll be a microfilm of tar over the pickup head, don't bother using Q-Tips and alcohol to remove it, you'll scratch the head and kill it.

The third and final thing that may be affecting your writer is weakening of the laser. Most, if not all lasers gradually lose power over time and depending on how many burns or reads you've done with your unit will determin how much weaker your laser is compared to when it was new.

[boss]

This is very depressing! Can we talk about something else?

[bganthis]

Ok,

Here is the Error I get from using EZ CD 5.0

E80041882: CD error - power calibration error - [03/73/03]

Here is the Error I get from using Nero 5.5

Could not Perfrom Fixation

So does 500 or so discs in 2 months seem like it would be enough to kill this burner? Maybe just the back to back burning of 20 or so discs puts the burner to work a little too hard?

I have used EZ 5.0 and Nero. Both give the the error. Remember this is After the TOC which on my CD Roms, is done BEFORE the burning of the Data. It burns the TOC and then hangs at 100% and does not go on to complete the burn of the data. It just sits there a few seconds and gives me the error message.

I am about to go buy another burner, I just wanted to get the input from you guys.

Anyone else had the burner fail after only bout 500 burns?

Hmmm

[offline]

Sony 920s (Ext) ..5 years+ & still going strong. Doubt if
my LiteOn x24 will last that long.. hehe.

[bganthis]

Well I fixed the problem.

The burner was done. I called and they said to bring it in for an Exchange. Yeeee Haw.

Installed the replacement. Now its back to burning. Hopefully this will pump out more than 500 before dying.