Do CD burners grow old and die?

June 5, 2005 9:51 AM

The CD burner in my 1GHz PIII era computer has been acting flakey lately, getting halfway thru a burn and then crapping out with an error, or just causing the burning software to hang, such that I have to kill it.

The software that came with the box was Adaptec, which I believe has evolved into Roxio since. I tried installing Nero 6, but that seems to detect even more errors from the burner. I have burned maybe a total of 200 discs over the life of the box. Is this the burner telling me it need to be replaced? If I drop in a new burner, can I just re-install Nero or Roxio and expect it to work? I also have an older PI box that I would not mind having a CD burner in, does Win95 support CD burners, or is that a lost cause?

posted by ackptui to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

I personally bank on a CD writer lasting a year, and then failing in pretty much the way you're describing. Any more life I get out of it is a bonus (the last TDK writer I bought was retired after 2 years, still working, but it cost 4x the price of an unbranded one).

Almost all burners come with a copy of Nero in the box - I'd just splash on a new DVD writer ($30? $40?) and trash the flaky old hardware (even if it appears to write a disc correctly, are you going to trust that disc not to have errors?)
posted by Leon at 10:17 AM on June 5, 2005

You might just have a dirty lens. If you have compressed air, or some other source of saliva free blow, just direct it at the read-write head (you might have to open it up, you won't hurt anything if you are gentle).

I have also used a Q-tip with alcohol to rub gently on the lens, but I have also scratched some lenses that way, so...

The electronics repair faq is a great resource! Here is the optical drive section.

Don't be cheap though, DVD writers are cool!
posted by Chuckles at 11:07 AM on June 5, 2005

I put a CD burner in my Win '95 box when it was the only one we had. Honestly, the software that came with it worked better and easier than anything I've used since. I think at the time the burner was a couple of hundred dollars, and you might have compatibilty issues with more modern hardware, and you might have to find an older version of software that's '95 compatible, but at least I can swear it was supported under that OS.
posted by unrepentanthippie at 12:18 PM on June 5, 2005

My PC has a weird problem. In the last couple of weeks, both Nero and WinXP's native CD writer do the same thing: they restart the PC when the CD starts burning.

Anyone with any ideas?
posted by madman at 12:37 PM on June 5, 2005

Re: Computer hangs halfway through a burn - have you checked for viruses/trojans/spyware? It sounds like a buffer underrun problem. Alternatively, are you burning from a highly fragmented harddrive? A defrag might solve the prolem.

I've had an old Sony burner that's about 5 years old and it still works great in an old P3 box.

If you're in the market for a DVD burner, the NEC 3520A is awesome - very very reliable, fast, and can be had for less than $70 CDN.

Re: Madman - that's very very strange. Have you added any new parts to your computer? It could be a power supply problem (burner draws more power than the PSU can handle, CPU/Mobo gets shortchanged - pow, restart)?
posted by PurplePorpoise at 4:36 PM on June 5, 2005

I used to have issues with my 52x Memorex burner, until I built a new system and moved the drive over. Looked to me like an IDE issue; data would get backed up in transfer, the system would get bogged down, and it would hang or give me a burn failure, very much like what you are describing. I eventually traced that and poor HDD performance to a possibly corrupt IDE controller.

You can also try configuring your system such that source drive and burner are on different physical IDE channels (ie, don't have the burner as the slave drive on the same cable as your HDD). If you are experiencing issues with data transfer that will help. You can also burn at a slower speed rather than maxing it out, as Nero is wont to do by default.

If you really suspect that it is the drive and not the computer itself, see if you can stick the drive in a different box and test it. If you get similar failures, you can probably conclude that the drive is the issue (whether dirty lens or corrupt internal buffer or what have you).

Also, in my experience the Roxio software has been utter crap ever since Roxio bought Adaptec. I've had Nero work flawlessly on even ancient 4x catridge-loading burners installed in creaky old junkpile-salvaged machines.
posted by caution live frogs at 1:04 PM on June 6, 2005