Error message after erasing DVD-RW with Toast

[duncancraig]

Hi All, I've knackered all my DVD-RW stock now, including some expensive TDK stock. I have tried to erase the discs using Toast to re-use them, and now all the discs show an error in Toast:

Sense Key + Medium Error
Sense Code = 0x57
Unable to recover Table of Contents

I've also tried to erase them using my 106 at work with no luck. So is there any other App that I can use to erase these discs?

My 107 has the latest official Pioneer drivers, from a few weeks back.


Thanks for any help,
Duncan.

[live4ever]

Are your disks guaranteed for life? Can't you just return them (I know my Sony -RWs have lifetime warranties).

[deadsierra]

Did you quick erase or full erase?

[spiderman2k1]

I think the Disc might be bad I had that happen one time with a CDR-RW. Nothing would erase it. If its alot of bad DVD-RW it might be your burner having a laser problem.

[Frobozz]

This probably won't apply to you, but I had a problem with Toast erasing or recognizing an erased DVD+RW disc (yes it works with my drive and Mac). I thought the disc was hosed until I took a soft cloth and gently cleaned its surface. Suddenly the disc worked fine again.

[duncancraig]

Thanks for your replies,

I have 6 discs by 2 different manufactures, I don't have any guarantees, and they are all faulty. I have tried full and quick erase. Still no luck. It's very odd.

[zinkton]

I have this exact same problem. Toast will never reliably quick-erase any DVD-RWs I have. DVD+RWs it does fine.

The DVD-RWs are not permanently hosed. What you can do is find a program that will force erase (not-quick, the full kind which takes 45 minutes or so). One program that I have found that can do it is cdrececord ProDVD (google search will turn it up in no time). It's downloadable and free for personal use with a license key that you can grab in the README. Just download the OS.X/Darwin binary and use the following flags:

./cdrecord-prodvd-2.01a24-powerpc-apple-macosx1.4 dev=IODVDServices/2 speed=1 blank=all -force -eject

Here's the key - use the "-force" luke! I find that speed=1 works for all media, regardless of speed. IODVDServices is what you use if you have 1 drive. Use the /2 to specific the second drive (I have an internal DVD drive, and the external firewire is at /2). Now, it will spew forth some errors and start blanking. After maybe 10 minutes or so, it will have gone far enough into the disk that it won't matter if you reboot your computer; in fact, you probably want to do this since the app will lock your drive for what seems like forever.

Then, you can put the DVD into Toast and it will look like a regular, blank DVD-RW again. Just make sure when you want to erase it, use the normal erase, not the quick mode!

I've recovered ALL of my DVD-RWs this way. And every single one of them was hosed by using Toast's quick erase method. This was true with ALL versions of Toast I've used, up to and including 6.0.7.

[zinkton]

I've since found the link to where to download ProDVD:

http://ftp.berlios.de/pub/cdrecord/ProDVD/

The files you want to grab are:

http://ftp.berlios.de/pub/cdrecord/ProDVD/README
(IMPORTANT! This has the key in it; it's the environment variable CDR_SECURITY about halfway through the file)

http://ftp.berlios.de/pub/cdrecord/ProDVD/cdrecord-prodvd-2.01a24-powerpc-apple-macosx1.4
This the correct binary for using it on Mac OS X.

Download them both, and create a shell script which looks like this:

#!/bin/sh
# Change the CDR_SECURITY variable to the one in the README, this one is probably expired.
CDR_SECURITY=8:dvd,cloneparc-sun-solaris2,i386-pc-solaris2,i586-pc-linux,powerpc-apple,hppa,powerpc-ibm-aix,i386-unknown-freebsd,i386-unknown-openbsd,i386-unknown-netbsd,powerpc-apple-netbsd,i386-pc-bsdi,mips-sgi-irix,i386-pc-sco:1.11::1093000000::rivate/research/educational_non-commercial_use:9vl2T2kP6w6O4h.bXuet8hP1Z3H5erm3qWm xhbcr.fHvuN8ZJbhQUWBzjAc
export CDR_SECURITY

sudo ./cdrecord-prodvd-2.01a24-powerpc-apple-macosx1.4 dev=IODVDServices/2 speed=1 blank=all -force -eject

(this is the end of the shell script)

When you run this script, be sure to change the dev=IODVDServices/2 to whatever your drive is. Probably just IODVDServices for most of you.

[chikanakan]

Toast has both Quick Erase and Full Erase and both work fine for DVD+RW, -RW, and CD-RW. If you are having this type of problem, the media is hosed. DVD-RW don't last long. Every time the TOC gets erased, written, etc you shorten the life of the disc. Marketing say the disc last 1000 writes, but the TOC easily becomes corrupted. Some programs may say the disc is erased, buy from my experience they are not and writing data to the disc will not work.

Using the same disc in different drives is also very bad and cause cause lots of issues and corruption of the disc since drives erase differently.

Early DVD+RW were very bad and disc only lasted a few writes before the disc was no good. Firmware can play a big part in this too, so updating it is always good.

The only thing that happens during an erase is a command is sent to tell the drive to quick or full erase. After that command is sent, Toast doesn't do anything besides sit there and wait for the drive to send a command that it's done. Is pretty low tech.

Mostly sounds like cheap media.

[Iceman67]

I had the same problem with Toast 6.0.7. I started using DiskCopy's Erase feature and that one seemed to work most of the time. Good luck.

Ice

[teaonmars]

Hi,
I'm having the same problem with some dvd-rw discs.
I don't really know how to create that shell script.
I tried to enter everithing in the terminal but it tells me command not found.

I don't know if i'v downloaded the binary correctly. It's just a file with a white document as icon. it has no extention.

Could someone help me with that ?
thanks!