DVD-r/ram drive vivastar rs111

[birdygal]

I am having alot of problems with my drive since installing xp
The dvd-r media is not recognized most of the time when it is it usually has an I/0 error, Nero, BGold, Movie Factory, MY DVD 3.0 and the vivastar recording software that came with it doesn't work, I have posted on windows site and no help , Vivastar's tech support was no help , there are no drivers other than the ram driver that comes with it which I have no need for the ram drive anyway. I also have a sony dvd+rw cd-rw drive which works fine in xp, I would suspect the drive being defective but it worked fine with ME

The drive will read cd's , read dvd's just does not recognize blank media even the media that came with the drive ocassionally when it does writing to it always comes up with an error

Any help would greatly be appreciated

[birdygal]

I did some checking on my system and I do see a problem, device is listed as a matshita dvd ram LF-310 in windows xp AND THE DRIVE ITSELF IS A MATSHITA DVD-RAM LF311, I have reset cmos on the motherboard and it is still showing the wrong drive version , cmos in setup doesn't give a specific drive version just says that it is a LF
I have uninstalled everything replaced my soundblaster live with another <I saw some forums where soundblaster live was causing conflicts so I tried removing that also, accessing the drive now locks up my computer

[Liki]

I think all of these -R/RAM combos are all from Panasonic.

They show up as the LF-310. Panasonic OEMs these to other vendors.

I own one and it works fine for me in XP. Only the DVD-RAM portion fails. Funny that XP has DVD-RAM as a native function. But I read a couple of MS articles that RAM works with the older SCSI drives (hitachi and one other brand). I have a dual-boot setup (98SE when I need RAM capabilities, XP for -R burning).

As for the DVD-R media not being recognized, here's how I fix them:

If the disc is compatible with the drive, its needs to seat correctly. I know, weird. Eject the tray, take the disc out and put it back on the tray.

If you've tried that a couple of times and it still doesn't recognize it, then the disc may be the problem.

I've purchased DVDPRO brand from Meritline.com and they were crap. None of them would be recognized.

Princo (branded or ones with DARK purple dyes) works the best. Some of the lighter dyes have problems when burning 4+gigs of data.

As some posters have said, the picture pixelizes near the end.

These cheaper DVD-Rs are good for DVD9 to 2-DVD-R conversions because you're likely to burning < 4gigs on each disc.

Good luck!

[birdygal]

I tried the primedisc they are not recognized and another unbranded from shoptech only 1 would recognize and burn all of my video's final product are usually between 2.5- 4 g <all of the other sites suggested princo brand as not very good , I didn't try those, I am trying to burn with using movie factory my sony +rw they all burn with no problems even cheap optodisc +rw discs

[Liki]

I noticed that there are 2 type of princo. Dark and light discs. The lighter ones are the ones I have problems with, while the darker ones are better even though they're the same brand.

I use PrimoDVD 2.0 to burn my stuff and it's fine. Haven't tried ULead.

[R0N|N]

OK great to hear you came to the same conclusion as me

now i need a good deal on a 100 pieces spindle of dark purple Princo dvd-r.

Any idea ? in europe if possible :P

Thanks!

and if you guys wanna setup a msg board for the LF-D310 owners, catch me on icq : 34113601

I wanna buy the BulkPaq media from http://www.blankdiscshop.co.uk/acatalog/SVP_Communications_Recordable_DVD_Discs_16.html

They are supposed to be Princo as well, but 2nd generation

and it seems 2nd gen is the lighter dye ones, and dark purple is 1st gen.

ShiiiiiiiiT!~ Princo was a very bad brand for CD-R, same goes for DVD-R.

[R0N|N]

well ;p

that Vivastar burning app is pretty tight ;p

and that's the free edition ;o
do you have a better version bundled with the burner ?

I will use it only from now on, because nero gave me shit(the 3 latest builds) and Prassi/RecordMax gave weird error messages at the initializing of the lead in.
B's Recorder gave me a BSOD at bootup on win2k
PowerCDR 5 is in Japanese only
Instant DVD doesn't support burnproof on the LF-D310

I just burned three of these light colored Princo in a row, and it worked like a charm :Þ

Only one question, anyone knows if the Vivastar burning app supports burnproof ?

BTW you guys be sure to update your firmware to A22 at www.firmware.fr.st and get the LATEST drivers at drivershq.com under /DVD/Panasonic/

And the drawer of the LF-D310 is fine by me, I used to have several Syquest and then Syquest-likes devices, and they all had the big issue with magneto-optic Winchester technology(iomega products included), that's the Click Of Death, so a dvd cartridge is a great idea!!

[Eug]

I have an LF-D311 in a Firewire enclosure. It too gets recognized as a 310. No big deal because it works fine.

When I first installed it I had problems, esp. with DVD-RAM. After reformatting XP (for other reasons partially), all my problems went away. (I had installed some misbehaving programs and XP didn't seem to like them.)

DVD-RAM works beautifully, and so does DVD-R (with Nero). XP has native drivers only for FAT32 read/write and UDF read only, but the Panasonic drivers work great for UDF read/write. For data I use UDF 1.5 exclusively, because my Mac (OS X) likes UDF 1.5 too.

By the way, I don't think there is any A22 firmware.

[Liki]

this is where i get the dark purple dvdrs. www.qtccdr.com. They're unbranded and the top of the disc s gold. I don't know if they'll ship internationally.

I was at their shop getting a replacement of Ritek (unbranded) for the Princos. I told the owner I had great luck with Princos (dark purple) and he handed me a spindle of 100 of these. He assured me it was Princos. These were $2.89 about 3 months ago. Make sure you ask that the discs are dark purple. But if RON|N is right, these discs are becoming rare.

I'm using Prassi PrimoDVD 2.0 on a dual-boot setup (98SE & XP). I would prefer to use XP for everything, but XP doesn't like DVDRAM for some reason. XP would recognize the first disc that's in the drive, but as soon as I eject it and put it back in or put in a different disc, it doesn't recognize it. I didn't have any problems with Win98SE. My DVDRAM discs are FAT32 formatted. XP was setup after Win98SE but it's sitting on its own hard drive. I was thinking maybe some files got crossed over from Win98SE during the setup. Could it? even on a separate hard drive?

Nero hangs whenever I start it.

One good thing I like about Prassi when recording DVD movies is that it checks the folders before it burns it. If something isn't correct, it won't burn it. This helped me a lot. Of course you can force it to burn by disabling this feature.

MY LF-D311 drive has the A122 firmware.

[R0N|N]

http://www.xscomputertechnology.freeserve.co.uk/item275.htm

They say it's 2nd gen and it has the wrong color......

so the dark purple are 1st gen.

anyway, i got sick of this princo troubles, princo already gave me troubles with CD-R so let's forget about this shitty brand.
even ARITA is better than PRINCO.

I just ordered 150 Vivastar Unbranded, i hope they'll do good

Vivastar sells the LF-D310 with their stupid logo on it, CAN'T BE WRONG >

If it doesn't work, I will yell in french at these silly swiss dorks.

Cheers!

[birdygal]

Finally got my drive to record using cheap media too plays perfect on apex players
vivastar unbranded and hypermicro systems cheap media

[Guey]

HElllp!!!

When ever I use Nero,Ulead and Power diretor to burn dvd-r movie disc it either doesnt burn at all because it is moody nero,or when 20% through the process it pops up a internalt error...what gives...how do you guys do it? make a Vob_ts folders and then use Vivastars program (which is the only one I got to work successfully,but not in making movies) to transport them over to disc