DVD-RAM corrupted in PC drive?

[AlanL]

The DVD drive on my laptop seemed to be getting increasingly flaky, so I've just purchased the LG GSA-E40N external USB DVD writer.

I was hoping to be able to use the DVD-RAM capability of the LG to transfer recordings from my Panasonic DMR-E85H DVD recorder. I put a new Maxell MX120 DVD-RAM into the Panasonic, and made a short recording. I then loaded the disc into the LG drive - seemingly no problem as I was able to see the recording and copy it off onto my hard drive. I made no attempt to modify the contents of the disc on the PC.

However, when I then put the disc back into the Panny, although it would quite happily play the recording, if I tried to delete the recording, or record anything else, or format the disc, it puts up a failure message an goes into a recovery loop lasting about 10 minutes. It appears that the disc is corrupted and cannot be used again.

Just incase it might have been a duff disc, I tried another, this time making several recordings and trying deleting, editing etc on the Panny first of all. This all worked fine, but again after putting the disc in the LG drive, it was unusable in the Panny.

I even tried formatting the disc to UDF on the PC using inCD, but the only effect of this was to send the Panny into an even longer recovery loop.

Has anybody else come across this, or have any explanation? I'm reluctant to try any more discs at the moment, as they are rather expensive to use as a one-shot media!

[piano632]

Maybe Panny doesn't like Maxell RAM discs. Have you tried Panasonic or Fuji RAM discs? All I can say is I have used Panasonic and Fuji RAM discs (same media code) back and forth between my JVC recorder (which has an LG drive inside) and PC drive (Samsung) numerous times and have not had any problems.

[classfour]

Pannys can be picky about RAM - none of mine (E20, E55) like Memorex RAM discs.

[DereX888]

I second that. They are picky.
Panny I had best worked with TDK (never any problem).
Other than that... AFAIR most of my Maxells worked too, so did Panasonics. I never had any Memorex RAMs though I cant say.

[AlanL]

Thanks for the replies.

I only bought Maxell's because they were the only brand I could find. I have a blank Panny disc but it's in a cartridge, and I've never worked out how to open those.

I'll try to find some cartridgeless Panny's this weekend.

[piano632]

You can buy a 15-pack of DVD-RAM for $20 direct from Panasonic here:

http://www2.panasonic.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/vModelList?storeId=15001&catalogId...00000000005702

They are the top-quality ones from Japan too. Other package deals on RAM there as well.

[DereX888]

Actually my company uses many Memorexes (I forgot about that, sorry, but its because we use them for data not for videocapture) and few times I recorded something on on Panny using'em, and I don't recall any problems either.