Superdrive in QS Died

[seamuskrat]

Odd problem:

I have been burning many DVDs for backup of my 120 gig,and toast took a bad crash. Rebooted and now all I burn in Toast, and Diskcopy are dead disks.

It goes through the motions, but upon verification it failes. The odd thing is, the disks, are still blank and useable by another machine.

So, the question is whether the Superdrive itself is DOA or if its a software thing and I must replace some files, plists, or prefs.

I have run your basic battery of disk utilities and repaired permissions, etc. Ican make disk images with toast and disk utility and save to disk, but I cannot burn them.

Any thoughts?


Its a Quicksilver dual 1 gig, Original Superdirve (2X I believe).

Of course, this may be the excuse Inweed to go get a 88.00 A107 from Frys and have 8X burning.

OK, reinstalled Toast, ran utilities and not working still.

Get this error:

Sense Keys Illegal; Request
Sense Code = 0x72, 0x03
Session Fixation Error
Incomplete track in session

Then toast says
Lean out failed to be written.

These are all images that cab be burned just fine on my other machine.

 

[cpjakes]

Have you done any searches for your errors? I'm wondering if it's a Toast thing or the drive itself. I don't know enough about their errors to make a judgement.

Does the drive still read discs? Have you installed any other hardware lately or other software that could be causing problems? If not, I'd say your drive is shot. And $88 isn't bad for a replacement that's 4x faster...

 

[allroy]

Try the built in burner software

with OS X. If that doesn't work most likely it's hardware related, if it works it's a toast issue. Also have you tried burning Cd's, just to eliminate all the variables.

-j

I have the 107 in my Quicksilver and it works like a charm.

Odd problem:

I have been burning many DVDs for backup of my 120 gig,and toast took a bad crash. Rebooted and now all I burn in Toast, and Diskcopy are dead disks.

It goes through the motions, but upon verification it failes. The odd thing is, the disks, are still blank and useable by another machine.

So, the question is whether the Superdrive itself is DOA or if its a software thing and I must replace some files, plists, or prefs.

I have run your basic battery of disk utilities and repaired permissions, etc. Ican make disk images with toast and disk utility and save to disk, but I cannot burn them.

Any thoughts?


Its a Quicksilver dual 1 gig, Original Superdirve (2X I believe).

Of course, this may be the excuse Inweed to go get a 88.00 A107 from Frys and have 8X burning.

OK, reinstalled Toast, ran utilities and not working still.

Get this error:

Sense Keys Illegal; Request
Sense Code = 0x72, 0x03
Session Fixation Error
Incomplete track in session

Then toast says
Lean out failed to be written.

These are all images that cab be burned just fine on my other machine.

 

[seamuskrat]

Disk Utility and Toast are both DOA as well as CDs and DVDs. So I am beginning to think it is hardware. Especially since my failed disks are blank and able to be burned on other machines.

 

[maxvamp]

DUDE... Where's my Laser!!!

Sounds like the burner died.

Pioneers have long had the characteristic of reading/writing solidly, then dieing suddenly. This is much better than the alternative of decaying slowly and getting finickier on discs it burns.

Also, I just got a call this weekend from a friend that also had his QS's SuperDrive fail suddenly. His too was the drive. Apple care replaced it for free.

If you need another drive, the Pioneers will work, and they are just over $100 from places like Meritline.com.

Pretty easy to replace too.

Max.

 

[seamuskrat]

OK, so this is not an uncommon occurrence. After all the troubleshootong I was wondering. I have ruked out software, and no where can i find storieof a Superdrive burn laser taking a suicide dive. It reads fine, but won't write.

So, what was the magic trick to get Apple to relace a 3 year old drive from a QS? I think an 8X for 100 will be simpler than hours on the ohone with Apple for POSSIBLY a free 4X, but hey, might be worth it.

Sounds like the burner died.

Pioneers have long had the characteristic of reading/writing solidly, then dieing suddenly. This is much better than the alternative of decaying slowly and getting finickier on discs it burns.

Also, I just got a call this weekend from a friend that also had his QS's SuperDrive fail suddenly. His too was the drive. Apple care replaced it for free.

If you need another drive, the Pioneers will work, and they are just over $100 from places like Meritline.com.

Pretty easy to replace too.

Max.

 

[bidge]

Replacing with the 107D works so well, I just bought one two days ago and put it in my Quicksilver. My old drive hadn't broken but I was having problems with 4x media and it's harder to get 2x media in NZ now.

When I got the drive it had Official Pioneer firmware on it 1.10, so I put it in my PC used a hacked version of 1.13 so that you can burn your discs at any speed, put it in my mac and it works perfectly with iDVD, Toast, iTunes, everything, it is one sweet drive. I burnt some data to Apple 4x media at 8x taking 8 minutes and then verified it on two computers fine. I will probably stick with 4x, but it is good though.

I regret not replacing it earlier...

 

[maxvamp]

Shhh... Secret

In my friends case, Applecare was worth it, since he is down at the apple store alot. In yours, I am not sure it would have been a bargain, but then again, three years ago, I didn't think drives would ever be this cheap.

I am kind glad they are, however since My PM DA's A03 three died two years ago, and the A05 I replaced it with has been a dream by comparison.

As far as knowing...

I was ( am? ) a PIONEER certified tech for the old LaserDisc systems, as well as certified by Phillips on the CD-i. I keep on top of what they all are up to, and much has not changed since.

I guess I should have added earlier that Pioneer adds a feedback circuit to their lasers. When a laser is unable to maintain a certain output, it shuts down. In the case of LaserDiscs, there was only one task the laser had to do. Read the disc. With Writers, there are multiple tasks due to the multiple formats.

When I lost my A03 and My A05, the first things to show this problem was the RW discs.

Those discs require the most power to burn ( about 4 mW ) and when the drive starts to fail, those discs will be the first to go. The R discs will burn for some time longer, as the laser only needs to produce about half of that power. Even after that, the power to read a disc in far lower than that. In the past, I have seen LD/CD players that only needed .18mW to read a disc.

I am not surprised as to your findings.

If you want a good source of various DVD info, this topic has been covered in many ways here on the MacRumors forums. If you need a couple of other good sources, try videohelp.com. They are more optical disc help than video, but the info is good. You can also try cdrinfo.com


Max.