Curious Toast 7 problem

[willrob]

I have a Pioneer 111D (a 16x recorder). Lately, when I use Toast 7 to burn DVDs, I have a strange thing happen. Good Quality (Verbatim 16x) discs are seen by Toast as writing at only 4X. It doesnt matter4 what brand, in fact—all 16x media is seen as 4X.

If I clean my caches and restart the computer, I get 16x speeds back again, but only for the first disc burned. Then Toast reverts to 4X as the only choice.

After the disc is burned, if I check Toast's Disc Info, it will show all the correct speeds again. But of course at this point (a burned disc) it does me no good. And the next unrecorded disc is 4x again.

I've also noticed that if I click on Toast's Manufacturer's ID button (which takes me to this sight), the forms are blank, as if VideoHelp has never heard of the media code before. This applies to all media I've tried.

Any suggestions on what's happening or a solution?

[Frobozz]

You are witnessing the problem with Toast but I'm suspicious that the problem lies elsewhere. Toast depends on the drive to tell it what speeds are supported and any other media information. The drive's firmware gets this info from the disc.

So what is happening to cause a failure in this communication after a first disc is burned? I don't know.

There are reports where users have had trouble with multiple disc burns using Toast 7, but as I recall that was with earlier versions and not with 7.1.2. Also, the problem did not occur when doing multiple burns from a disc image and was about failed burns rather than slower burns.

You might check the DVD FAQ at www.xlr8yourmac.com and read other Pioneer 111D user reports on the Drive Compatibility database at that site for possible clues. Be sure you are using the most recent firmware.

I suspect there may be an OS problem that's causing this, but I easily could be wrong. Try downloading and applying the 10.4.8 combined system update because that fixes bizarre little issues that occur during incremental system updates.

[live4ever]

Try making a new user and using Toast with that account, is the drive internal, FW, or USB? What about the temp folder location for Roxio Converted Items - you can change it under prefs - make sure you have 10GB free on whatever drive it's on (it's probably not this but I've had strange things happen with Toast when there is no free space).

[willrob]

I've narrowed it down to either the Kernal Cache or the virtual memory cache file. It's more likely the Kernal Cache, but I still don't know why it's happening or what I can do to prevent it. I currently quit Toast, empty the cache, start Toast and then burn at 16x. It's kind of a pain in the keester. Am I allowed to say keester?

[lopaka1998]

I've narrowed it down to either the Kernal Cache or the virtual memory cache file. It's more likely the Kernal Cache, but I still don't know why it's happening or what I can do to prevent it. I currently quit Toast, empty the cache, start Toast and then burn at 16x. It's kind of a pain in the keester. Am I allowed to say keester?

Have you tried defragmenting your drive lately? Your virtual memory files are probably fragmented (or perhaps also your source material?). This could really be the culprit. Try iDefrag. It's not too expensive - and has saved me tons of times. Remember MacOS only defrags files 20MB or less in size...

One more thing - you should definitely download applejack and do a full scan of your drive for directory and permission errors (I always recommend this - especially when working with large files). Trust me - you don't want prolonged directory errors. Your computer could write over files - or worse - you could loose them all. DiskWarrior is also a great directory rebuilder. Saved me plenty of times, too - highly recommended.

Also is your DVD drive connected to a ata/100 or ata/133 cable & adapter? You might need those faster connections for the faster speeds.

Firmware could also be the culprit... I know Pioneer is often updating firmware to make DVD media more "compatible". Perhaps you got a bunch of DVD's which aren't 16X compatible via the firmware??


Best,

--R

[willrob]

I use Applejak regularly, and also DiskWarrior. the media drive is only a third full (60G available). The media I'm using has been wokring fine until now (Verbatim 16 x).

One the caches are cleared and Toast sees the proper disk speeds, it burns at the selected speed an the discs come out fine—otherwise I might think the drive is failing. Later today i plan to get out my stopwatch and time a Finder burn of this same media and see if it sees the disk at a different speed. I know I can't tell what speed it's selecting, but a comparison to the Toast burning time might give some clue.

[terryj]

I'm curious as to what the S.M.A.R.T. status of your
drive is reporting in Disc Utility? Does it say verified, or failing?

Since Cache clearing fixes the issue, why not look into
Tiger Cache Cleaner or Cache Out X or script a cache cleaning routine in Macaroni to set an automate
cache cleaning at intervals that will take care of the problem?

It's not a long term fix...wiping the drive and recloning/re-disc imaging will be your ultimate step to clearing out the corruption,
but at least with an automatic cache cleaning running say,
every hour or every 4 hours at idle, will help until you
have the time to do so.

A tech article to follow is here.
I'm sure this is common knowledge to you Willrob,
but I'm posting it nonetheless to help others who might not know these steps.

[willrob]

The S.M.A.R.T. status of all my drives is reported s "verified" by Disk Utility." But lately the status of me as a User has been S.T.U.P.I.D. I'm usually pretty good at finding the cause of, if not fixing, issues like this. But I'm drawing a blank.

I use Cocktail to clean house. I leave it open to the cache clean section, and after burning a disc, I quite Toast, click on Cocktails its clean caches button and then relaunch Toast. The quiting and restarting of Toast seems to be required.

I burned sme audio CDs with iTunes yesterday, and checked its disc burning log (why doesn't Toast have this?) and the requested burn speeds (24x max for iTunes) and the actual burn speeds matched.

If I actually timed the burning of the Toast dvds, both those reported as 16x and those that only offer 4x and Best, perhaps I might see not so big a difference. Although I think my sense of it has been a longer wait on choosing Best, when 4X was the only speed. And of course, DiscBurn in the Finder doesn't offer any speed choices.

[lopaka1998]

It could definately be the drive - or the cable - or the operating system or the computer... Usually the most simplest thing is the culprit - from my experiences with computer repair.

I would open your mac, remove the dvd burner, and make sure the jumpers are set okay (I believe Cable Select is required on my computer - if I remember right - for it to work properly). Since you're there, unplug and replug the ATA cable. Check the motherboard ata side of the cable, too. Maybe a loose (or badly connected) cable. Perhaps it's sending the wrong speed.

The next thing to do would be to test the drive with one that works for sure. Do you have someone nearby that would let you borrow their DVD writer for an hour or so?

It's just process of elimination. If the same problems persist, perhaps a system setting or corrupt system file could be to blame. Best thing to do in this case would reinstall MacOS - but I would do this only at a last resort.

I would like to ask your opinion about the 111D as I have one as well (I have only burned at 2.4X DVD). What do you think about the new 1.2.9 firmware? I was thinking of cross-flashing with the DVR-111 firmware (as opposed to the DVR-111D firmware) which would (from what I have heard) allow DVD-RAM capability. Any thoughts?

--Rob

[willrob]

I'm not using the 1.29 firmware yet. I'm still at 1.23 which I had to pay a PC shop to install for me, since there's no way to do it in a Mac, and I truly do not know a PC user.

I've read the 1.29 features, but since I don't use any of the newly added media (most of which I've never heard of), I see no reason to update soon. I did crossflash to the RAM writing firmware, and the RAM disc use is really great for large projects that require frequent backup. DVD_RW need to be erased each time you want to add something, while RAM discs act just like a hard drive—add or remove files without disturbing the data that is already there.

This drive has been functioning normally with Toast 7 for months, and I haven't poked around inside my case lately, so I don't know how wires could have gotten loose. But since I need to do a cleaning routine (dust, cat hair, peanut butter) I've give the hardware a once over.

I think I'm still under warranty, but I can't return it to Pioneer without first putting the original firmware back on; and the cost of doing that, coupled with shipping.... it wold be cheaper to just order another one.

[SERBIAN]

Maybe you can try to flash your Pioneer drives by yourself next time and avoid paying that...Check rpc1.org for more info...

Im using DVRFlash for Mac on all my Pioneer drives /3 of them/ without any problems so far /firmware updates/.

[willrob]

In the past I also used DVRFlash to modify my Pioneer drive' firmware. But DVRFlash has not been updated to work with the 111D, or any other version of the 111. It won't work with the 112 either, when it starts shipping. A lot of Mac Pioneer 111 owners have been waiting for Las Vegas to update DRVFlash, but it's possibly not going to happen. He came up with a new version for the 110 (which I owned at one point), but it took a couple of months. The 111 uses a different kind of mechanism (don't ask me in what way, I don't know) and it's a much bigger project for him to create a version of DVRFlash that will work with it.

In my case, in order to flash the drive, I need to take it to a PC repair shop where they charge me $10-$20 to do it. They've told me that they do this all the time, particularly for Mac Owners, and have a special set up where they can pop a writer in and out of a bay pretty quickly.

I've investigated the possibility of (someday) using an Intel based Mac, running Windows to do it myself; but from the reports I've seen, it doesn't work—something to do with the drivers not being seen by Windows.

[lopaka1998]

That's why i have an old win98 machine lying around... every once ina while I need it for something... flashing firmware updates, using a windows only prog, etc... it's come in handy.

Maybe in 10 years when I can afford an intel core duo mac I'll upgrade. but until then...

[terryj]

another thing I forgot to ask..Willrob, is this drive on a seperate PCI ATA Card?
I know at one point you were concerned about speed(throughput)
to the burner...and were talking about doing something like this.

Assuming you did set it up like this,
If you move the drive back to the ATA 33 or ATA 66 controller,
does it exhibt the same behavior?
Something is causing the cache to be corupted, just ruling out options...

[willrob]

No, I ended up keeping it on the internal ATA 33 Bus. I decided that the extra speed that I'd gain during the burning of discs wasn't as important to me as the speed of the hard drives I was using every day. So with 16x media, I was only get something like 8X writing, which is only three or four minutes difference. But Toast always saw the discs at their rated speed until now.