DRU500A Failed big time !! Replacement drive died !!

[SonyUser]

DRU500A Failed big time !! Replacement drive died !!

This is a follow-up to my problems !

OK, lets start by placing specs here of the system

Athlon 1800XP (un-clocked)
MSI 6380E motherboard
256meg DDR memory
ATI AIW 7500 AGP card
Maxtor 60gig HD (IDE)
SB Live 5.1
Ricoh MP5120A

400watt PSU to power system.

Replacement drive came today with firmware 1.0c.
Drive manufactured 07 October 2002

Flashed the drive to 1.0f re-booted PC

Burnt two DVD-R's read them back in the drive, all fine so far.

Burn 3rd DVD-R, go out while drive burns the disc, come back 2 hours later.

Go to read the disc in the Sony DRU500A, burning smell, drive died again while trying to read the disc !

Media used
DVD-R media from DATASAFE made by RITEK. Rated 2x burn.

Anyone else had this problem ?

If you have, please responed here with details as I am now making a list.

SonyUser

[vw671]

Could it be your computer that's killing it??? Try the next one in another computer before putting it in yours.

My DRU-500a has done over 150 burns with out one hiccup.

[SonyUser]

Thanks for the input.

OK, lets take your idea as a possible cause.

How can it kill the drive ?

I have placed in this PC over 7 other CD-ROM drives, 5 CD-RW Recorders from different companies, and two other DVD-RW drives (Ricoh and Waitec).

All these drives have worked without a problem, not one has failed like the Sony drive has.

Do you still think that this is a possible cause knowing that other drives have worked in this system without problems ?

I will test your idea thou, in my PIV system once Sony have replaced the drive with me, I should have a replacement by the middle of next week.

[donpedro]

I have placed in this PC over 7 other CD-ROM drives, 5 CD-RW Recorders from different companies, and two other DVD-RW drives (Ricoh and Waitec).

What are you testing laboratory ?

[SonyUser]

Err ! Yes, sort of !

I Review drives if that helps ya !

More details on this to follow once I have found out why the Sony drive keeps failing in this PC.

[sammie]

Based on several of the other threads out there, it has seemed to me that there are clearly bad groups/lots/somthing of the Sony 500 drives. I've had mine from almost day 1 of the drives existence without a single problem. I've flashed it, burned 100s of disks, no problems with any of the standard software, except the usual inital recognition problems with any new burner. Also no problems with any particular media. Many folks experience seems the same as mine, but others seem to have lots of problems.

I think if those who are having problems would post system details (like you did) might help, if it is as you are wondering a box specific thing. And/or post drive serial numbers in case it is a lot related problem.

[mjwaldschm]

I too have a Sony DRX500UL. Was working fine as far as I know. Had only burned one DVD with the supplied media (RW) and the supplied software (MyDVD). Then I decided to update the firmware that Sony was suppling from their website that is "supposed" to allow up to 4x burning with 4x rated media.

Well needless to say now I can't burn at all. Tried contacting Sony Technical support numerous times via web and telephone. Via the web I can get through but when I explain what the problem is they immediately tell me to call the 800 number. I can only do that from home and have proceeded to be on hold for over 2 hours with no success to date.

Has anybody else had this problem? Sony told me I couldn't "undo" the firmware update but didn't know whether the firmware actual burns to the internal chipset on the unit. Also, after the update it thinks my DRX500UL (external) is the DR500A (internal). Don't know if that makes any difference.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. If I can't resolve this with Sony by tomorrows close of business with tech support I'll probably just return the device to the retailer I purchased it from.

MJ

P.S. I guess this might help. The error message I'm getting is below:

"Could not complete last command because: Stream not initialized (DVDErr, -19930)"

[donpedro]

They have some testing utility on their web. Did you try it ?

[vw671]

Thanks for the input.

OK, lets take your idea as a possible cause.

How can it kill the drive ?

I have placed in this PC over 7 other CD-ROM drives, 5 CD-RW Recorders from different companies, and two other DVD-RW drives (Ricoh and Waitec).

All these drives have worked without a problem, not one has failed like the Sony drive has.

Do you still think that this is a possible cause knowing that other drives have worked in this system without problems ?

I will test your idea thou, in my PIV system once Sony have replaced the drive with me, I should have a replacement by the middle of next week.

Yes, I still believe that it is possible but highly unlikely. Different drives drives are all contructed differently and have different tolerances for power. If you are running out off spec power some drives but be able to tolerate it but maybe (a big maybe) the sony can not.

Are you running at the maximum rating of your power supply? Running low voltage is just as bad as running high voltage.

I'm not an electrical engineer or anything like that, but have been a system engineer for some years have seen my share of werid stuff with electronics.

[mjwaldschm]

They have some testing utility on their web. Did you try it ?

Can you provide a link or at least directions to where this utility is located on Sony's website. I've spent numerous hours there trying to find some solution to my problem and have not seen any such utility.

[Benzima]

2 drives burnt up in 1 PC after only a few burns? Possible you got 1 bad drive, but 2 in a row? Still possible, but I'd look elsewhere. You seem very knowledable in testing hardware, so I'm sure you'll find the root casue, but how many replacement do you think you'll get?

I think it's wierd that you noticed the burning smell while reading the 3rd disc but not before, after it had burned the 3rd disc for 2 hours.

90 burns and counting here. Almost zero problems.

In either case, good luck.

[kitty]

Check to see if you motherboard has voltage monitoring and enable it & check the levels (or check them with a meter yourself). High voltage could be to blame- or maybe heat if the case is not well ventilated as the drive does not have a built in fan like the pioneers.

My Intel mb has voltage monitoring and a utility to let me monitor temp, voltage, and fan speed. If my 500A goes I'll at least know it's the drive and not the PC it is in (one reason I have not put it into the external case I bought too).

[SonyUser]

2 drives burnt up in 1 PC after only a few burns? Possible you got 1 bad drive, but 2 in a row? Still possible, but I'd look elsewhere.

Yes, been looking at a possible cause to this. The only other thing I can think of and test when a new drive arrives is to test it on the IDE port (secondary) on it's own and leave the Ricoh MP5120A disconnected while I carry out tests and risk yet another drive failing.

Sony have been very good so far with replacing the drive, as they are also unsure why this is happening and they wish to find out what the cause is.

Check to see if you motherboard has voltage monitoring and enable it & check the levels (or check them with a meter yourself). High voltage could be to blame- or maybe heat if the case is not well ventilated as the drive does not have a built in fan like the pioneers.

Yes, done all this with tests on voltage and amps. Can't be the PSU (400 watt) causing this drive to burn out all the time, or can it ?

As for voltage monitoring on the motherboard, this is just for the board and not other units connected via the drive power connectors from the PSU.

Case is a tower with two main fans (one in PSU and one in the case at rear). The Sony DRU500A was at the top of the case followed by the Ricoh MP5120A under it. Both the fans in the rear of the case are also at the top one under the other.

I find it strange for the Sony drive to fail with reading disc's. The drive will not spin a disc since it burnt it's self out, but the orange light (LED) still lights up.

I know the drive does not spin the disc, as I tested it by marking the disc with a pen (CDR PEN), the disc did not move after the tray was ejected 4 times.

I will know more once I have tested the replacement drive in my PIV next week.

I have also placed this info on MSI's own forum with the hope that they will have a look to see why this is happening with this motherboard.

As I said before, I have tested other drives in this PC without any problems.

I think it's wierd that you noticed the burning smell while reading the 3rd disc but not before, after it had burned the 3rd disc for 2 hours.

The burn of the disc did not take 2 hours. It took less than 16 minutes at 2x as it was around 2 gig of data (files). As for the burning smell, yes, it was very strong when it did it. I thought it was my PSU at first, as I has a simular smell earlier in 2002 when the fan in the PSU stopped working.

I shut the PC down via the power button on the front as soon as I noticed the burning smell and proceeded to strip the PC down to see the root cause of it. Turned out to be the drive again. (SH*T I said to myself, not again!).

So, the story continues... More to follow after tests with replacement drive next week.

[donpedro]

They have some testing utility on their web. Did you try it ?

Can you provide a link or at least directions to where this utility is located on Sony's website. I've spent numerous hours there trying to find some solution to my problem and have not seen any such utility.

You can find it in this post

http://www.vcdhelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=125061&highlight=

[u4Ea]

I too had a bad 500a. The drive was finalizing and all of a sudden the drive went dead. No power whatsoever. I had only made some 5 disc and this happened. I am on my 2nd 500a as I returned the first back to the store for an exchange. I did not smell any thing that resembles being burned. I did however upgraded my fw to F. I am going to watch this really good this closely as my 30 day return (with no restocking fee) will be coming up.

System Specs: AMD XP1800, 512mb Crucial.... Win2ksp3....

u4Ea

[spsp2]

I am on my second dru500A , i kept trying to upgrade the firmware and it would not upgrade, said it could not write to buffer. Someone mentioned a utility i had installed that came with my Epox motherboard. I uninstalled the (Busmaster IDE) utility and the firmware installed pronto. I reinstalled the busmaster ide utility and evertime i rebooted the computer told me i needed to install the utility , so i did a system restore and stopped getting the "you need to install the utility" and started making a copy of a dvd i had made and it got to 98% while copying and stopped and said it couldn't finish ,there may be finger prints on the disk i was copying so i cleaned it and it got to 98% again and the DRU500A died. No light ,would not open the tray , the bios would not detect it. I had a couple of IBM hard drives(which i will never buy again) crashed so i bought a Western Digital 80 gig and reinstalled everything while waiting on my replacement dru500a but did not install the busmaster ide utility and the replacement drive has worked great. If you need to chat with a live agent from Sony go here....spsp2
http://sony.storagesupport.com/

[SonyUser]

OK, I now have my replacement drive from Sony.

The drives label gives a manufactured date of 17 December 2002.

Drive came with the 1.0e firmware, I have since updated it to 1.0f.

No burns have been done yet as I am about to test it reading disc's I cut with the last two drives before they died on me.

The drive is now in my PIV system and not my Athlon system.

I also have the external version of the same drive, this is also a December 2002 drive (label on bottom).

This drive has firmware 1.0d in it, this has not been flashed to 1.0f yet.

The external drive is connected to my Athlon system via the i-Link port.

I will now test these two drives over the next few days / weeks to see if I can get them to die as my last two did

More to follow soon ..... (good news one hopes).


Also, just so that some of you know, Sony now lists 4 drives on it support site, these are DRU500A, DRX500UL, DRU500AX, DRX500ULX.

The latter do not have firmware files listed.

[SonyUser]

Just a small update on my two replacement drives.

So far both drives are still working fine.

The DRU500A (internal) has firmware 1.0f and is still running fine in my P4 system.

The DRX500UL now has the 1.0g firmware and is also working fine on my Athlon system.

I have burned a mixture of 2x DVD-R's and 2.5x DVD+R's without any problems on both, but with one exception, some of the 1x and 2x DVD-R media still fails at the 70% mark in the DRX500UL drive with the 1.0g firmware, these are Ritek and VivaStar made discs !

My next test is with 4x DVD+R media from Verbatim that I have here, more will be added to this post soon on the results.

Oh, just one other thing...

What are you testing laboratory ?

Yes, see http://www.cdrwcentral.com

[spsp2]

Did you say they had a firmware 1,0G for the DRU500A or was that for another model......spsp2

[SonyUser]

Both the DRU-500A and the DRX-500UL....... the firmware update file does both drives.

[spsp2]

Thanks for the info i'll have to go over there and read up on it....spsp2