ImgBurn Write Error During Erase, Won't Let Me Abort

[koberulz]

I keep getting Write Errors on a BD-RE DL. Just hundreds and hundreds of "Retry 1 of 20, Sectors X-Y", then "Retry 1 of 20, Sectors Z-AA", etc etc.

Tried erasing it and I'm getting the same error after 28% completion, but it also won't let me abort, unlike the writing process, so it's holding onto my disc and my drive and I can't do anything.

Can I stop it somehow? Why is it happening?

[october262]

try restarting your computer then press the eject button on your burner
to get the disc out.

[koberulz]

Oddly it seems to have got all the way up to 89% now, despite a ton of write errors.

They're all retry 1 of 20 though, so presumably it's working the second time and not having to go to retry 2? Still no idea why this is going on. Hearing some odd noises, mostly clicking with the occasional very brief grinding-type noise.

EDIT: Just completed successfully, apparently. Not sure if I risk burning anything....

[lingyi]

Either the disc is bad or the Blu-Ray laser is dying. Most likely the disc is bad. The dye on rewritable discs are organic and more sensitive to improper storage (heat and light). Even though manufacturers typically claim a rewritable lifespan of at least 1000 times, this may be drastically reduced because of multiple issues with the dye. Rewritable discs (DVD or Blu-Ray) are modern day floppies, use them for temporary storage and toss them once you start getting read/write errors.

If I remember correctly, rewritable discs, require greater laser power to burn and a weak or failing laser may fail on them and work fine on regular write-once discs.

[koberulz]

So it could be the disc, could be the drive, and there's no way of knowing? Delightful.

Left it to burn overnight and same result as the erase, bunch of write failures followed by allegedly successful completion.

I've used this disc maybe a dozen times, ever. And yeah, only ever as a tester of my DL burns because DL discs are expensive and I don't want to burn a coaster accidentally.

EDIT: My player doesn't recognise the disc as an actual Blu-Ray and insists it's a data disc. I can play the three titles, but for some reason the last few seconds of one of them plays as part of the menu's m2ts file.

[october262]

try updating your drives firmware.

[lingyi]

So it could be the disc, could be the drive, and there's no way of knowing? Delightful.

That's the nature of troubleshooting. Try a different drive, try a different disc. You may also try writing at a slower speed. But it sounds like the disc is corrupted and if the laser is failing, having it run for hours trying to write to it is only causing additional stress and leading to an even quicker death.

I don't know if there's a Blu-Ray equivalent. but for DVDs, you could use SuperBlank to force erase the disc and possibly bring it back to a clean writable state.

[koberulz]

I only have one BD drive, and I only have one BD-RE DL disc. If as you say the disc is more likely to fail before write-once discs in the case of the laser going bad, a successful burn of a different disc would prove nothing.

[usually_quiet]

The dye on rewritable discs are organic and more sensitive to improper storage (heat and light).

No. The writable layer in re-writable discs uses an inorganic phase change material, actually a rare-earth metallic alloy, which has two solid states, amorphous and crystalline. These two states reflect light differently. The amorphous areas reflect less light than the crystalline areas do.

Heating the material to a higher temperature causes it to transform to an amorphous state. The crystalline-to-amorphous transition is reversed by heating at a lower temperature, which causes the alloy to re-crystalize. Unfortunately, the amorphous state isn't stable and will slowly re-crystallize over time even if it isn't heated, causing the disc to become unreadable. There is also a limit to how many times the state of the material can be changed and reversed successfully.

[lingyi]

@usually_quiet

Thank you for the correction

[lingyi]

I only have one BD drive, and I only have one BD-RE DL disc. If as you say the disc is more likely to fail before write-once discs in the case of the laser going bad, a successful burn of a different disc would prove nothing.

Troubleshooting is eliminating/confirming possibilities. The probability that the disc is bad is higher than the drive is bad, and using another disc will likely show that the original disc is bad (most likely) or the drive is bad (less likely).

Getting a new disc is far cheaper than buying a new drive and even if it still fails, you'll have a (necessary) spare.

On the hardware side, try your disc (original and new) in someone else's burner to provide further evidence if the original disc is bad.

[koberulz]

Are Ritek BD-DL discs worthwhile?

I decided to risk it without burning to an RE, and it turned out I screwed the disc up so I need to buy more BD-DLs, but the Verbatims are only sold in 25-packs now and I can't justify $200 for one disc.

[lingyi]

IMO, I wouldn't trust anything from Ritek, especially for test purposes.

Amazon Australia has a three pack https://www.amazon.com.au/Verbatim-Mitsubishi-Speed-Blu-ray-Re-Writable/dp/B0041WCXOO/...101063&sr=8-19 of BD-RE for ~$34 shipped, not sure if it's AUD or USD.

[koberulz]

I'm not talking RE, just BD-R DL. Need printable ones though.

Can't get four-disc Blu-ray cases anymore either apparently.

*sigh*

[lingyi]

Amazon.com has them https://www.amazon.com/s?k=blu-ray+cases+4+disc&crid=21M25WMQEF5NK&sprefix=blu-ray+cas...b_sb_ss_i_6_11, though shipping to Australia will probably be horrendous. You might try going directly to the vendor to see if you can get better pricing, though Amazon probably has the best shipping prices.

I know that a lot of things, especially hard drives are outrageously priced in Australia, so you may want to check into a shipping forwarder. I know there's people that do that for things from Asia.

[koberulz]

Irrelevant if I can't get the discs.

There used to be a place in Australia that sold the cases for a couple of dollars each. Amazon is 4x as much straight off the bat, then throw in shipping...