Sony 500A Data Write Problems

[zilch321]

I'm having a very odd problem with my 500A. Today I wrote a data disk for a friend. After burning the disk with the newest version of nero, I pop'd the disk into my creative labs dvd player to see how it turned out. I was shocked to find that though I could read the tree of the disk just fine, I could not read the files themselves. It looks like it wrote the files fine, however the dvd player tries over and over to access the file and fails. The dvd does have one set of subdirectories and the file names of the files are a little long. But they should be ok.

Has anyone else seen this problem before? Does anyone have any idea what may be wrong with this? I can't quite figure out why this is such a problem. BTW, the dvd's seem to play fine in my burner, but not in anything else. I checked for the problem in my vaio laptop and have the same issue.

[Felix_2000]

This can be caused if it failed to write properly to the disk, or only wrote the TOC, Table of Contents. Also possible if maybe you write to 4x on a non 4x disk or something similar.

Now if it keeps happening try burning at 1x, or with a different burning program.

-=| Felix |=-

[zilch321]

Interesting. I am using meritline Pro disks that I am burning in nero at 1x. I burned with a much better media (vebat) 2.5X disk and came up with the same damn result. Interesting to note is that if I burn a video media disk, I have no problems. Very odd. I also burned with the Veritas software that came with the burner, and came up with the same issue. I did double check to make sure the veritas software was burning at 1X as well. Damndest thing I've seen.

[Felix_2000]

Maybe there is a problem with the drive... sounds a little strange...

-=| Felix |=-

[zilch321]

Actually, just wondering if anyone else has tried this:

I went to the sony support website and downloaded their drive-checker software. YOu can find it yourself here:

http://sony.storagesupport.com/dvdrw/dru500adwn.htm

When I ran the software with a cd-r (it only wants a cdr) it told me that the only supported firmware version was 1.0c, and I got "Media" errors when it burned the test disk. The read and write test went fine. I'm wondering if anyone else running a 1.0f firmware actually had a test that came out correctly. Knowing this would help me figure out if the software is faulty, or infact I have a bad drive. If someone has 10min to do this, I would be much appreciated.

[heretic422]

I have a Sony 500a with firmware "f" and downloaded their utility. It requested I use a CD-R, which I did. It wrote a whole bunch of stuff to the disc and then said everything was fine. I think the little app makes a log file or something so you can e-mail it to the techs at Sony for troubleshooting.

Hope it helps. I know that 5.5.10 Nero is a big steaming pile of dog poo. Find a copy of 5.5.9.17 somewhere, like my FTP server, and stick with that. E-mail me for details and access. This is the same software that was downloaded from Nero's site. There's no serial with it as you'll need to purchase your own. But at least it's a start. And this is the version that doesn't have the bug with DVD+R discs not being able to close.

[Felix_2000]

I will test. Give me a few min.

-=| Felix |=-

[Felix_2000]

Tests all work fine for me...

-=| Felix |=-

[zilch321]

Outstanding! Looks like I have a date with Sony customer service.

Thanks for the help guys. I ran the test a second time and got an error when the the software attempted to compare the files on my hard drive with the temp files on the disk that the drive burned. Sounds like something isn't right.

[rkr1958]

I ran it using a CD-RW disk the first time and the test failed! (media - failed, write - passed, read - failed). This freaked me out since I thought everything was working fine so I reran the test using a CD-R and it passed. The CD-RW I used in the first test was a brand new Memorx CD-RW but limited to 4x write speed. But anyway, I guess I passed? If you haven't tried a CD-R you might want to try the test with one first before calling Sony Customer Service.

[zilch321]

Did anyone else notice that the software says the only supported version is 1.0c? This is odd to me because the examples on the website shows a much higher version. Maybe the software itself isn't correct? Of did everyone get confirmation that their firmware was ok?

[rkr1958]

Did anyone else notice that the software says the only supported version is 1.0c their firmware was ok?

For the failed test using the Memerox CD-RW I got the message supported firmware 1.0c and current firmware 1.0f (or something like that). It looks like I got the same message as you. However, when I ran the test using a CD-R it passed.

[twen]

I don't know about Memorex CD-R, but stay away from Memorex CD-RWs. They gave all kinds of weird thing to me on every disc from a 5-pack and I had to return them!

[MrE 15]

My advice for the sony is to stay away from nero full stop. I have done many tests with the latest nero, and all burns are unreliable in many standalone players.

I started burning using VOB and now every standalone will play them including the PS2.

[twen]

I think we should discontinue this post and switch over to another one, which gives more in-depth discusstions...

http://www.vcdhelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=437364#437364