24 hours w/o music is bad news

June 23, 2005 7:41 PM

GrrFilter: Are the CD-Rs I bought just really crummy?

I bought a 30-pack of Sony CD-Rs on sale. Of the 15 I've tried, only two burned. The rest gave me an error notice and spit themselves out. I tried burning my last two Imation CD-Rs and they worked great, which makes me think it's got to be the Sonys. I've turned the computer off and let it rest, but nothing helps. I'm using an iBook G4 with iTunes, and none of my songs are iTunes purchases; they've all burned before. I've tried burning at 1x and 8x, but no dice. Here's what my log says:

console.log:

Size: 1 KB
Last Modified: 6/23/05 9:31 PM
Location: /Library/Logs/Console/Hamster/console.log
Contents: Mac OS X Version 10.3.9 (Build 7W98)
2005-06-23 21:21:29 -0500
iTunes: Burn started, Thu Jun 23 21:25:57 2005
iTunes: Burning to CD-R media with SAO strategy in MATSHITA CD-RW CW-8123 CA0T via ATAPI.
iTunes: Requested CD burn speed was 1x, actual burn speed is 8x.
iTunes: Burn underrun protection is supported, and enabled.
iTunes: Burn failed, Thu Jun 23 21:26:11 2005
iTunes: Burn sense: 5/2C/00 Illegal Request, Command sequence error
iTunes: Burn error: 0x80020022 The device failed to respond properly, unable to recover or retry.

Any ideas on how to make the rest work? I'm taking a twelve-hour road trip tomorrow and could really use some tunes on the way... thanks!

posted by hamster to Computers & Internet (16 answers total)

Throw them away, and buy some new ones. I'm sorry, but that's what it looks like.
posted by Dean Keaton at 7:47 PM on June 23, 2005

I've never had any luck with Sony CD-RWs (never bothered to try the CD-Rs).

But the CD-R brand I can reccomend is FujiFilm. Only had 5 out of 100 turn out to be bad.
posted by Colloquial Collision at 7:51 PM on June 23, 2005

this is one of the most frustrating things i have to deal with about computers ... and of course, one can never be 100% sure whether it's the cdrs, the cd burner or the software

i have better luck with tdk and fuji than anything else ... it's my experience that the ones that go on sale have a greater failure rate and sometimes you aren't really saving any money

you might try burning only 450-500 megs on these ... if that doesn't work, you'll have to get others
posted by pyramid termite at 7:53 PM on June 23, 2005

Where did you buy them? My best guess is that they were subjected to extreme temperature changes.

Good move testing another brand. That rules out your drive.

Return them if you can, or just eat the cost. Even if they burn, I wouldn't trust them.
posted by bh at 8:25 PM on June 23, 2005

From a PDF on this site:
(05,2C,00) Illegal Request: Command Sequence Error. This error is generally due
to incompatible or marginal blank media.
posted by tellurian at 8:41 PM on June 23, 2005

Can't help you, but for future reference Memorex average 1-2 coasters per 100 for me.
posted by Who_Am_I at 8:50 PM on June 23, 2005

I've had problems with Sony in the past.
Still working through a Phillips 100 stack, about 80% gone. I've only hit one or two bad so far.
posted by Kellydamnit at 9:03 PM on June 23, 2005

I've burned 500-600 Mitsui CD-R's as audio discs with very few failures over the past 5 years. All of my discs come from American Digital (no I don't work for them). Not that any of this helps you get discs for tomorrow's road trip.
posted by istewart at 9:21 PM on June 23, 2005

I buy the cheapest CD-R's I can find at the store (about $20 CAD for a stack of 50), never had any problems. I use it only for backups of data...but that's not important.

I've never actually experienced a bad cd myself, maybe I'm lucky, I go through only about 20cd's/year, so I can't say I am a heavy user like the people above me.

I would definetly return them, although I'm not sure what the policy on that is. I wouldn't be surprised if the place you bought them at tried to blame your hardware.
posted by Sonic_Molson at 9:46 PM on June 23, 2005

"iTunes: Requested CD burn speed was 1x, actual burn speed is 8x."

I'm not sure what this means, but if you can burn them at 1 or 2x you will have a better shot.
posted by Manjusri at 10:00 PM on June 23, 2005

Response by poster: Any ideas on returning them? I'm using the five of thirty that worked, but would like to know if anyone has had luck writing a letter to Sony or taking the pile back to Target.

I have my settings on 1x in iTunes, so I was confused about the 8x thing. Burning at 8x didn't seem to help. One thing that seemed to help was clicking on the status bar right after it prepped the CD... I started to click on the status bar right as it said "writing." I dug up a couple of TDK disks, and they worked perfectly. So now my question is, how does Sony get away with selling crummy product? Is this a coincidence that they didn't work, or should I steer away from Sony? Any other duds out there I should avoid?
posted by hamster at 10:22 PM on June 23, 2005

Well, let's not rule out the good possibility they were mistreated en route. Sony by the way buys blank CDs from another company. In fact, almost every company does that. It really can be luck of the draw sometimes.

Now, when i put my money where my mouth is I find Fujifilm, TDK and Maxell to be good. I almost never get a coaster. Maybe I'm lucky.
posted by Dean Keaton at 10:43 PM on June 23, 2005

Do you have the most recent iTunes?
posted by bitpart at 11:08 PM on June 23, 2005

Make sure you have flashed to the latest firmware version for your drive. Nowadays this is more of an issue for DVDs, CD technology has stabilized, but it is definitely worth a try.
posted by Chuckles at 1:18 AM on June 24, 2005

Target will take them back. It won't even change the bored expression on the clerks face.
posted by recurve at 3:53 AM on June 24, 2005

I have better luck with a crappy batch if I burn them at lower speeds. YMMV.
posted by Four Flavors at 2:42 PM on June 24, 2005