sonydru500a...big headache!

[tomainzy]

Just bought one of these drives after hearing so much about it.I was originaly buying a Pioneer 105/a05 but purchased 'the last one on the shelf' of the sony's...been told they were very difficult to get hold of.
so far i have gone through over 35 4x's and only produced around 8 complete disc's.
The sony will not read direct to the hard drive when I try to,it just hangs there or when it does it tells me that there was a READ ERROR!(same disc most of the time) or WRITE ERROR! when it does allow itself to write(different brands of disc used....to be sure).Sometimes it doesn't recognise that there is a disc in the drive.I have used Clone,Nero,Record now Etc to no availe.Today i have taken the drive back to be exchanged for something temporary ,under the advice of a reliable P.C.Store,until I recieve my replacement next week.my o/s is X.P.Pro...p4 processor..512 ram,80 gig drive...all of which is less than 3 months old.
Is there anyone who can HELP ME PLEASE.I'm at my wits end.By the way...the replacement drive acts the same(sony dvd-dwu10a) and the sony firmware update has been installed.

[neonflx]

How is your DVD 500a configure, i.e. primary ide or secondary, master or slave?

[tomainzy]

the sony dru500a is configured as slave and the dvd -rom as master.I also have a lite-on 48x set to slave ( on another I D E )with my hard disk.

[dlb]

I have my dw-10ua set to cable select, my orginal writer was set-up that way. I have had nothing but 100% complete burns, only 1 disc unusable, but that was my fault.

dlb.

[GandyMan]

the sony dru500a is configured as slave and the dvd -rom as master.I also have a lite-on 48x set to slave ( on another I D E )with my hard disk.

U should have it as primary, when writing u should always use diff. channels, what were the drives on that u were using, did u try using a slower speed to test if it was the drive or just the speed at which u were trying to burn. Your system is fast enough but if miss configured it will cause it to error out on the write phase, I hope your compurer store told u that atleast. In my opinion u should have your HD or drives on the pri master and slave no CD or DVD on them due to it slows down the HD (DMA incompatabilities) then use your DVD-R on the sec master and your reader on the sec slave, gofrom your dvd-rom to hd then back to dvd-r. should have no problem if used that way. Anyway I would a say if it worked sometimes and not sometimes than the drive is good, But just me. Others here have great ideas and I am sure u will here from them.