Ritek G04's suddenly won't burn at 4X

[Metaluna]

I have a 100-pack of Ritek G04 DVD-R's that I bought about a month ago from Rima.com. Other than a few coasters here and there, they have been working great with my Sony DRU-500AX (2.0f firmware). I have the drive in an external 1394 chassis and I usually use DVD Decrypter to burn .ISO files made with ImgTool.

But now, about halfway through the 100 pack, they won't burn at 4x anymore.

Last night I tried to burn a few discs and suddenly DVD Decrypter is only burning them at 2.0x. I tried about 5 discs, but none of them would burn at 4.0x. I even moved the drive to a totally different PC with a different OS (Win2K vs XP, etc.) and got the same results. The wierd thing is, when I do the burn in Test Mode, it burns at 4x, but when I uncheck the Test Mode box and try to do a real burn, it goes back to 2x again. The only thing I didn't try was using different software (I also have RecordNow DX and Nero), but it's the same version of DVD Decrypter I always use, and it used to work great at 4x with this media. The only other 4x media I have is Memorex 4X +R (good quality RICOHJPNR01's), and they still burn fine at 4X.

So either the Ritek media has suddenly gone funny about halfway through the pack, or there is something wrong with my drive. The 2x-burned discs seem to play fine, and the error rates look fine in Kprobe. Neither of the two machines I tried have had major software or hardware changes. Has anyone seen anything like this before? I have had a fair number of coasters in this batch of Riteks (the drive wouldn't even recognize that they had been inserted) so I'm hoping I just got an odd batch of discs.

[ReDlxn72]

I was hoping to buy a 50 pack from supermediastore and i was hoping to see if you had gotten any answers to your question

[eatin sammiches for lunch]

have u tried cleaning your drive??

i had a problem buring riteks at 4x halfway thru the pack..i got a dvd cleaner and after i cleaned my drive it worked great.

i have burned over 400dvd-r's and that was my first time cleaning it....i think it was long overdue

[NIIDeep]

Just wanted to add my info...

I have the internal Sony DRU500AX with 2.0f firmware. I just recently bought a 50 pack of the Ritek G04 from supermediastore.com. I've burned 5 disks so far and all of them are burning at 2x. It's really irking me. I paid extra just for the 4x speed and I'm getting nothing but 2x burns. I've tried Roxio EZ Cd 6, Nero 5.5.10.42, and DVD Decrypter 3.1.6.0. I'm so frustrated that I'm questioning whether my driver will ever burn at 4x! I plan on buying a 5 pack of TDKs or Verbatims to try out.

On the other hand the Riteks are giving me good results. Disks are playable with only one coaster so far (but I think it was my fault for over estimating DVD Decrypters ability).

It's sorta promising to know that at least someone with my drive, firmware version and media had, at one time, been able to burn on 4x with this media.

Please keep the thread updated with anything you find.

Thanks.

[lordsmurf]

This happened to me once. All I did was reboot and all was fine again.

[Metaluna]

As a followup, I solved the problem by installing a hacked version of firmware meant for the Liteon LDW-400D burner. The Riteks now burn at 4X again and seem to be fine, however it still doesn't answer what changed in my environment to cause the loss of 4X burning with the Sony firmware. By the way, I have power-cycled the burner many times as well as tried it on another PC.

I hadn't thought of trying a cleaner other than just squirting a little compressed air into the open drive. Last time I used a cleaner on one of my drives (I think it was an Allsop CD with little brushes sticking up off the surface), I put it in and it immediately spun up to 40X. It didn't seem to do any damage, but the thought of anything making physical contact with an optical head at that speed was enough to put me off of head cleaners since then.