Sony DRU-500AX won't burn Ritek g04 at 4x

[RangerXXX]

I upgraded to the newest firmware and it still doesn't work. When I start to burn at 4x the drive spools up and down about 20 while writing the lead-in track (about 5min). If it finally starts burning without getting an error It ends up taking over 30 min, a little longer than if I choose to burn at 2x.

[69Dartman]

Mine does the same thing except for the spooling part with those disks. Sony 500's are for most of them very media picky and only write a few media at 4x. They blame it on poor quality media rather then adding better media support. Also some will write to those just fine at 4x and most wont so it's also hardware dependent.
I decided to go faster and bought a LiteOn 811 for 160, better media support and half the money a year later.
The Sony almost never makes a coaster and it was the first dual format, but for 350 you'd think they could let it burn more media at the speed they were designed too.

[handyguy]

I updated firmware & went from 2x to 1x. So I talked to free online sony suport at their website & they said to take it back to the old firmware & I did & its perfect.

[RangerXXX]

I was using a pretty old firmware and i thought that was the problem so i upgraded and it didn't work either way. What firmware are you using?

[RangerXXX]

I've tried every firmware version I could find including a hacked Lite-On LDW400D firmware and it still won't burn Ritek G04 at 4x.

[kayl]

I have 2 of these drives and have yet to get either to burn ANY DVD-R media at 4x. I have the original DRU500A and a DRU500AX.

I've tried everything you can think of... every version of firmware; every type of media I could get my hands on including Sony. Tried it under Win2K and WinXP (all service pack versions tried too). Tried it with the burning software that comes with the drives, Nero, and Easy CD Creator.

I wrote Sony and they suggested the problem was with my IDE cables. Not to leave any suggestion untried, I tried various different cables too (both 40-pin and 80-pin). Tried it on both IDE connectors on the motherboard and even threw them on my ATA controller card for grins.

Keeping in mind this is 2 different drives on 2 different computers and I'd tried every conceivable combination between them.. I wrote Sony back. Told them everything I'd done and they answered me with an "we don't know what to tell you".

I have loved my Sony drives to death. They were the first combo drives and I've definately gotten my money's worth. I just got a new Pioneer A07 though. I want to see if I can burn with that at 4x (until the 8x media comes out). If I can't, well then I'll know there's something bloody weird going on with my systems and I'll be back

[LiL_D]

I can burn the CMC 4x Memorex DVD-Rs fine on my DRU-510A.

[Gregg]

The same old story. Although I've been able to burn several other DVD-Rs at 4 on mine /f2.0c/ Riteks still can't burn at 4x. What is curious I requested a sample /1 disc silver top/ of Rima's Riteks several months ago and it burned at 4x without any problem. I'm using printable Riteks G04 now and they start at 4x but go down to 2x after 10% or so. That's why I got a Pioneer 106 especially for that purpose.
By the way is DRU510 capable of burning those at 4x?

[rkr1958]

This is probably not an issue but you might want to check to make sure that DMA is enable (and not PIO only).

I upgraded (MB, CPU, Memory, Video Card) from a PIII 733-MHz to P4 2.6-GHz. Anyway in the process I reloaded my O/S and Applications. I found that I could no longer get 4x burn speeds on TDK DVD-R media that I had gotten on my 733-MHz computer (with the same writer, DRU-500a w/firmware 2.0f).

After some trouble shooting I found that my secondary IDE channel (which contained my DRU-500a and DVD-ROM) was PIO only (the primary which contained my HD had DMA enable). After enabling use DMA if available in Windows and rebooting I got 4x write speeds with my DRU-500a using 2x TDK DVD-Rs.