Tech: Help with DVD drive

Subject: Tech: Help with DVD drive
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 25 Oct 05 - 08:37 PM

My DVD ROM drive has suddenly decided it doesn't want to handle DVDs any more, either DVDROM, or Films.

It happily handles CDs, audio or data, but when I try to access any DVD, it puts up a dialogue box which says "please insert a disc in drive E".

Has anyone come across this before and figured out how to cure it?

I don't particularly want to buy a new one if the problem is due to some simple software glitch.

Don T.

Subject: RE: Tech: Help with DVD drive
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 25 Oct 05 - 09:22 PM

I had lots of problems with the combo DVD/CD burner on my machine, with almost zero success for DVD burns and marginal for DVD reads. I gave up and replaced the drive.

Son (subspecies Idiot - he ignored nearly all my advice when he bought his new machine) had a total failure of DVD function on his combo drive, and subsequently a HD meltdown. Unfortunately the mfr supplied all the recovery software on two DVD discs. CD functions still worked, but I had to use the DVD reader on my machine via LAN to reinstall his OS on a new HD. Not a simple or fun process, and very time consuming.

The combo burners have a much higher rotation speed for DVD than for CD. Often they'll still burn CDs at high multiple speeds, but the rotation speed stability is much more critical for DVD functions than even for high-speed CD burns, so any little twitch in the bearings usually wipes out all DVD functions.

If the drive is more than a year or so old, it's possible the drive manufacturer may have updates that might help. There have been some "secret changes" (i.e. not widely reported) to disk formats that may require updates to the BIOS built into the drives. (Also true for older CD drives, especially burners.) The drive manufacturer may have test utilities you can download to checkout drive performance, but it's pretty hit-or-miss depending on who the maker is.

Changes in disk properties can have an effect, and it's difficult to tell that a given disk is to a new spec. If the drive works with an old disk that worked previously, but never worked with a new one, you may be the victim of one of those "disk format improvements."

If it doesn't work with disks that were previously ok, there are a very few settings that might have gotten out of spec; but chances are the drive is just not getting the rotation stability required for DVD function. I can't say that replacement drives are cheap, but there are some fairly reasonable ones in my market. Not particularly a recommendation, but I've been ok with my "MadDog Multimedia" (from CompUSA) replacement, that I believe was around $60 US a few months ago.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: Help with DVD drive
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 26 Oct 05 - 06:24 PM

John,

Have you tried the program DVD Shrink?

SRS

Subject: RE: Tech: Help with DVD drive
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 26 Oct 05 - 07:02 PM

SRS -

I found a manufacturer's test program that confirmed that my drive did have mechanical problems. I also had previously updated the BIOS (twice), and at the time there were "new formats" in circulation for which there was no update available for that drive. (The old drive came with a 2+ year old computer.) Replaced and currently not having a problem, but I'll make a note of the program.

There are setup and configuration problems that can screw things up, and of course they need to be checked out before replacing a drive.

Because of the continually "evolving" battle between competing formats, it is quite likely that a good many DVD drives - if used for "multimedia" - will need to be replaced if (say when?) a real winner comes out, just because of format incompatibilities. New drives are likely to maintain some "backward compatibility" and should be able to read older disks (we hope); but with an old drive people may expect to start running into disks that look like the old ones but won't play. If past performance of the multimedia distributors is any indication, they may not be labelled to tell you that they're something different. They likely will tell you that they're "new and improved," but they won't tell you what changed.

My own experience indicates that even when everything works, DVD is not a useful medium (for me) for data storage; I simply don't do video enough to require a lot of messing with them; and the bit of audio I do works well enough on CDs.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: Help with DVD drive
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 26 Oct 05 - 08:08 PM

I should point out that format in this case shouldn't be a problem, as this is a DVD ROM player, not a burner.

Besides that, it is refusing to recognise DVDs that it was accessing, both data and video, as recently as two weeks ago.

The system simply doesn't recognise them as discs, but runs CDs without problems.

Don T.

Subject: RE: Tech: Help with DVD drive
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 26 Oct 05 - 08:32 PM

My question was a bit of a non sequitur. The program isn't diagnostic, its a utility for copying DVDs. I think you have to download it "offshore." It works pretty well, once you figure it out (there aren't any manuals with it, but a few sites have posted information on how it works).

SRS

Subject: RE: Tech: Help with DVD drive
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 26 Oct 05 - 09:51 PM

An obvious thing when a drive doesn't recognize that a removeable medium is present is that the lens is dirty and it's unable to read the medium ID at the start of the disk.

A "cleaning disk" might help. If there's visible amount of fuzzies around the front end, just sticking a vacuum cleaner up close to the slot may pull some crud out.

You can also look in "Device Manager" - (assuming you're in Windows), and see if the device shows up, isn't marked as malfunctioning or a "don't use," and if a reasonable looking driver is hooked into it.

There are several ways to get into Device Manager, but in recent Win versions the easy one is in Windows Explorer, right click on "My Computer," pick Properties, click the Hardware tab, and there should be a button to open the Device Manager.

You'll see a branch called "Disk Drives," and you might find something interesting there, but the one you want in this case is more likely the "SCSI and RAID Controllers."

Assuming that you have the necessary installation disks, sometimes just deleting the driver and rebooting will let Windows find the device and install/reinstall the driver for it. In recent Win versions, you can expect Windows to have a usable driver for almost any drive of this kind, and it may find it on your hard drive or it may ask for your Windows installation CD. If it doesn't find one it likes, it should give you a chance to "Browse" to one you've downloaded.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: Help with DVD drive
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 26 Oct 05 - 10:39 PM

Would it be a region encoding lockout?

Subject: RE: Tech: Help with DVD drive
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 27 Oct 05 - 12:20 AM

Foolestroupe -

That would be a possibility, but I believe it's been said that disks that used to work in the drive now no longer are recognized.

With some drives, you have the option of setting, or changing, the region; and I'd suppose the setting might have gotten changed. I don't know whether that would be expected to give a "no disk" error, but I'd expect the drive to recognize that there was a disk, and give a "wrong disk" or "incompatible disk" error instead.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: Help with DVD drive
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 27 Oct 05 - 09:59 AM

Thanks for the input guys.

I have now tried all your suggestions but no change I'm afraid. I'm completely stumped.

I'm usually able to sort this kind of thing, but I can't figure out why a unit would play CDs but refuse to recognise DVDs when it was happily handling both a week ago.

Every instinct says software must be at the root of it, but I can't for the life of me see which piece is causing it.

Don T.

Subject: RE: Tech: Help with DVD drive
From: Lowkey
Date: 27 Oct 05 - 03:56 PM

Try going into device manager. Under IDE controllers, click onthe secondary and make sure that DMA is enabled. My DVD is locked into PIO mode whish means that it will only read at slowest possible speed which is a tad slow for new discs, I think.

Subject: RE: Tech: Help with DVD drive
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 27 Oct 05 - 04:20 PM

Don T -

The disk rotates at a much higher speed for DVD than for CD playback. The DVD also requires a much more stable (constant) speed. The CD playback can tolerate a bit of "wobble," but the DVD playback can't.

In combo drives, it seems to be fairly common to lose DVD functions while the CD part of it still works okay.

I don't know whether it's common to use separate lasers for CD and DVD or whether a single one is just focused differently; but the DVD requires focus to a different and much more critical "spot size" than for CD, and the two are pretty much independent. If the DVD laser isn't focusing (or isn't lit), the DVD can't be read by the drive, while often the less critical CD can be read.

A PROM/BIOS update that I installed on a CD drive about a year ago was almost 2 years old when I found it, but noted that attempting to use (read or write) CDs "to the new standard" without the update could cause mechanical damage to the drive. The "new standard" demanded a wider recorded area on the disk, and apparently when the head travelled into the "added area," without the update it could clank on something. I don't know of a comparable update for DVD standards, but there have been several new things in the DVD world that potentially could have similar results.

If you have an OEM drive that came with your computer, it may not be possible to identify the original drive manufacturer - even by pulling the drive out and finding the nameplate. You can't rely on just checking who's driver Windows installed, since PNP often identifies a device as by the mfr of the driver, not by the real maker of the device, if it's a generic driver.

If you can find the drive manufacturer's identity, it probably would be worthwhile to see if the mfr has a web site with any updates you can make. You may find both driver updates and drive BIOS updates. While there you can look for any diagnostic/test utilities that might be applicable to your drive. If the drive is more than a couple of years old, there probably have been a dozen or more new models since it was produced, and support is "iffy."

If you have added any new device that might show up in the SCSI/RAID tree in Device Manager it's possible that you have a SCSI conflict. A new device may have "taken over" the same identity as the DVD connection or may have pushed the DVD to a new device number. ALL OPTICAL DRIVES and ALL HARD DRIVES are "SCSI on the inside" and may show up there. Internal Hard Drives usually don't, but an "add on" might be there. External Hard Drives, USB or Firewire, usually will show in the SCSI tree. Nearly all Optical Drives will be there.

In Device Manager, you can "turn off" the new device by clicking an "x" in the "Don't Use" box, at least in recent Win versions. If you then DELETE the driver for the DVD drive and reboot, Windows PNP should try to install a new driver for the DVD. If there was a conflict with the new device, you may get a recovery.

A safer procedure would be to physically disconnect the new device and DELETE it's driver, and reboot. Next DELETE the driver for the DVD drive and reboot to get a new DVD driver installed. If there was a conflict, the DVD drive should come back. (I'm not optimistic that this will help, unless you know that you have added something at about the time the DVD stopped working.)

Note that you may need your Windows Install disk(s) and/or drivers from the device mfrs when PNP asks for a new driver for the DVD, and when/if you get to reinstalling anything you disconnected/deleted. Sometimes Windows will keep common drivers and those that have been used on the machine in local CAB files, but don't rely on them being on the machine unless you're really sure.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: Help with DVD drive
From: Bill D
Date: 27 Oct 05 - 04:56 PM

well! It's nice to know I'm not alone. I have been burning CDs for quite awhile, but bought some DVD for archiving, and the first 3 failed. I tried a much shorter test, and it worked....then tried a long archiving run again, and another failure. It make a certain amount of sense that DVDs, crowding much more data on the same size disk, would need much more stability and accuracy.

Now, I wonder if I can achieve the storage with shorter runs, adding smaller amounts to the DVD each time....it would be VERY frustrating to get it 87% full and THEN have it fail....

quote "FOO!" unquote

Subject: RE: Tech: Help with DVD drive
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 27 Oct 05 - 05:45 PM

Bill D -

I've tried using DVDs for archiving, but except in exceptional circumstances I don't find it an attractive proposition.

A DVD will hold about as much data as 10 CDs, but in my local market one DVD blank is about the same price as 10 CD blanks. No profit there.

DVD burns are much more "touchy" than CD burns, so at least in my experience, there's a much higher failure rate. Each DVD failure is about the same "price" as 10 CD failures, so the difference is nearly exponential.

I'm not convinced that the DVD has equivalent "archival" properties. While commercial DVDs seem to be fairly durable, home-burned DVDs seem to be much more susceptible to damage - and hence loss of data - than good quality CDs.

With "all that shit" on a DVD, data recovery is excruciatingly slow from DVDs. Just mounting one DVD and loading the file list takes almost as long as pulling a few files off of several CDs. The DVD format doesn't really have an index system, so in crude terms, it has to look at the entire track to tell what's there, and then has to follow the entire track to get to an individual file if you want to do something with one. And it's essentially all one track.

While data CDs have a relatively crude file system compared to hard drives, there at least is one there, and the CD reader can more or less go directly to the desired track to get something. Recovering an individual file, or a few files, is annoyingly slow, but not nearly as painful as for DVDs.

It should be noted that unless you pay the extra for a "Rewritable" blank, and mount it as such, anything ever written to either kind stays on the disk. When you do a multi-session burn and add something to a CD or DVD, all of the header stuff, track idents, etc., is completely rewritten in a new place. The old stuff is left intact, but disappears because it's not listed in the header info and hence there's no way to access it. Usually a multi-session will not give you too significant a reduction in total disk capacity, but there will be some reduction in the total amount of good stuff you can cram onto the disk.

I did, on purpose, use DVDs to archiving a set of image files that were too large to fit more than one per CD. In early try-outs, I managed to put 50 CDs worth of smaller image files on 12 DVDs, so there's a space saving; but I'm not sure it's really worth it.

I resurrected a few old 5.25 floppy drawers, and CDs fit nicely in them. I also just made myself a new 10 drawer CD cabinet to decorate the a corner of the living room. (It's a bit crude, but it's brown like the furniture.) Until I see significant improvement in data DVD usability and reliability, there will be very few DVD archives in either place.

For some multimedia things, you have to use them. I don't do much of that.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: Help with DVD drive
From: Bill D
Date: 27 Oct 05 - 07:21 PM

yep...I think you are right, John... I have so much stuff to archive..(craft photos, MP3s..etc.) that DVDs seemed like a reasonable idea, even with slower retrieval....but not if I'm gonna ruin every other one! Maybe I'll just save the stack till I get a reliable deck...*sigh*....back to CDs.

Subject: RE: Tech: Help with DVD drive
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 27 Oct 05 - 08:30 PM

Decent DVD/CD combo drives aren't too expensive, and appear to be a lot more reliable than ones you might have from even a year or two ago. Unfortunately the DVD recording standards are still pretty much like back in the days before the VHS/BetaMax disputes petered out.

With the coming out of dual layer DVD (in at least 4 separate standards that I've heard of) and the announcement of "pending release" of multilayer (more than 2 layers) disks, probably any drive you get now will last about until you need a new one to use the "new" disks. A "new alliance" announced last week - I think it was maybe HP and Sony(?) - is being touted as having "reversed the odds" on which recording standard will ultimately win the battles, but I'm not placing any large bets yet.

Not reallllly ready for prime time - in my house.

John