DVD writer not working, possibly dying?

[mike_maple]

Have tried to burn several iso files today, they all seem to complete but then there's nothing on the disc when I try to play them. Have tried both CDburnerXP and Imgburn, the latter had the errors "Waiting for buffers to recover..." then "Waiting for hard disk activity to reach threshold level..." - I don't know whether this is relevant. Tested the drive with Opti Drive Control - screenshot attached. Using Polaroid DVDs, but near end of spindle and have been working fine so far. Other discs read fine by the way.

I understand that I can take the drive apart and clean the lens, which may or may not make a difference, but was hoping that the results might give an answer that one of you can interpret!
Thanks in advance.

[Baldrick]

Have you tried the burned dvds on another computer?

[mike_maple]

Hi, we don't have another computer around, but have tried the dvds on conventional DVD players and my PS3, to no avail. Thanks.

[october262]

the best blank discs to use are the verbatium AZO brand. also try slowing your burn down to 4X speed.

[wulf109]

The errors your getting indicate your computer is busy with other tasks or you have insuiffiecent hard disk space.

[mike_maple]

Just tried burning at 4x, same result, a written but blank DVD. Thanks for the Verbatim tip!

[mike_maple]

39.5g left on the partition, when I got those errors on ImgBurn there were no obvious programs running aside from Google Chrome, and my computer has never had any problems multitasking before. I have been planning to upgrade from 3 to the max 4GB RAM for a while - I'm sure that'd help.

I'm happy to replace the drive, but I need to know first whether it's definitely the drive that's the issue.

Thanks everyone for the help!

[lordsmurf]

The source drive is likely fragmented.
Nothing suggested the drive is dying here.

[mike_maple]

Thanks I will try defragmenting and see if that helps.

[mike_maple]

I've checked the defragmentor -hadn't realised that it was already scheduled to run once a week, and as so, source drive is 0% fragmented.
I did run Disc Cleanup earlier this week, whether that has any relevance here I don't know.

[wulf109]

Google Chrome is notorious for memory use,don't run it when burning.

[mike_maple]

Oh thanks - will remember that.

Bit of an update - I tried burning a different ISO to the two which didn't work, and surprise, it burned fine and was watchable. Tried again with the first file - empty again. Whether this is a coincidence I don't know, I guess it could be that the two ISOs I tried originally are no good. Will try some other files.