Follow *all* advice at your own risk of course...g

Mine is to use the media the drive was *designed* for; not what it
*hopefully* may be backwards compatible with. Hopefully someone who
already had such problems will chime in...No; I don't use RW drives at
all; just read the common problems reported here daily for years...g

Tim K

"ned ludd" wrote in message
...

"Tim Kroesen" wrote in message
Ignore these idiots; you likely have a dying laser.
snip
BTW; use *only* discs speed rated for the drive you burn them on;
using
4x RW on a 32x modern drive is asking for trouble...

Have you ever owned a 32X writer, or any RW burner? Is this based on
personal experience or are you still parrotting of the rocket
scientist's
crackpot theory that manufacturers are so cynical or incompetent that
they
are incapable of or couldn't be bothered providing adequate firmware
for
their writers.

Ignore the parrot.
Manufacturers still include 4X rewriting speeds on 52X writers,
presumably
for backward compatibility with 1-4X media, though it's hard to tell
from
the scanty specs provided for most models.

Just as several HS writers I have access to have no problems burning
LS
media, my Ultraspeed also exhibits no misbehaviour with 1-4X media.
The LS
media, some of it packet written has not faded after nearly 4 years
(obviously I can't make similar longevity claims for the Ultraspeed
writer).
STILL waiting to lose ANY data from CD or DVD RW, can't make that
claim for
write once media.

The one thing I wouldn't recommend is packet writing to 700MB RW discs
(though there may be others who have a writer/media match that works
better
than mine). I have only found a single disc which is stable, 650MB
discs
(even dubious, unheard of brands) have proved completely reliable, and
the
same 700MB discs master with low error rates. If I ever lay my hands
on some
Ricoh 700MB RW media I may investigate further.