DVD-RWs & DVD+RWs

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drmacintosh

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I am working with an external Plextor 740U/F DVD burner on a Power Macintosh G4 (Gigabit Ethernet)400 MHz that is running OS X v10.3.9 "Panther". I have two versions of Roxio's Toast Titanium v5.2.3 & v7.0.2 installed. The problem that I am having is in both versions. The first time that I use a DVD-RW or DVD+RW that has been newly removed from the shrink wrapping, I am able to successfully get a burn. Whenever the DVD-RW or DVD+RW has been erased & is to be reused, just before another burn is to be performed, I get the message that this disc is full & to try another disc that can be written to. I also have Wintel based computers that from Nero OEM that has come with the DVD recorder, I am successfully able to reuse the DVD-RW or DVD+RW when it has been erased. I am using Maxell DVDs. According to Plextor they were stumped & have escalated the issue to the support engineers for further investigation. In the meantime while combing the Toast Titanium support section of the Roxio website, they suggest to try a different brand of media or else it could be a defective DVD recorder. I did this with no luck. The recorder does not appear to be defective because it works on the other Wintel computers successfully. Please help here.
 
Are you sure you're erasing those puppies?

A disk utility entry for a disc has three items:

1. device name
2..... disc name
3......... session name

You erase by hi-liting the device name.

PCs and such default to "write session" (make appendable) and RW
discs can be added to. Apple doesn't even offer that option for DVDs.

And I've noticed that my machine doesn't like DVD-RWs at all. DVD
Player pretends to work, but it shows a black screen. Disconcerting.
 
Guys, I cannot comment on external drives or third-party software. But, the Apple SuperDrive explicitly supports CD, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD, and DVD-R. I believe that some newer models also support CD+R/RW and DVD+R. Before releasing the optical SuperDrive, Apple used DVD-RAM in its G4 towers. Apple does not support DVD-RW or DVD+RW.
 
MisterMe said:
Guys, I cannot comment on external drives or third-party software. But, the Apple SuperDrive explicitly supports CD, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD, and DVD-R. I believe that some newer models also support CD+R/RW and DVD+R. Before releasing the optical SuperDrive, Apple used DVD-RAM in its G4 towers. Apple does not support DVD-RW or DVD+RW.
Click to expand...
Most of this info is quite outdated. All recent (maybe the last two years) Macs and SuperDrives provided by Apple support CD-R/RW, DVD-R/RW, and DVD+R/RW
Check this link for suggested info on a recent Apple-supplied superdrive (the Pioneer DVR-117D)
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=42718
CD formats with a '+' in them (except for CD+G, which only defines the subcode channels of an audio CD) are usually typographical errors. CD+R format does not exist.
 
DeltaMac said:
Most of this info is quite outdated. All recent (maybe the last two years) Macs and SuperDrives provided by Apple support CD-R/RW, DVD-R/RW, and DVD+R/RW
Check this link for suggested info on a recent Apple-supplied superdrive (the Pioneer DVR-117D)
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=42718
CD formats with a '+' in them (except for CD+G, which only defines the subcode channels of an audio CD) are usually typographical errors. CD+R format does not exist.
Click to expand...
This is all good and fine, but the OP does not have a new machine. His issue is more relevant to this Apple webpage.
 
MisterMe said:
This is all good and fine, but the OP does not have a new machine. His issue is more relevant to this Apple webpage.
Click to expand...
Maybe, but does not address the poster's issue, which is trying to reuse (erase) DVD-RW.
The Mac OS X has supported DVD-RW since sometime during Jaguar, and DVD+R/RW somewhere in Panther. The problem was no Apple Drive directly supported DVD+R, and the system did not directly support that format. Toast is an app that would provide that support, if the hardware has that capability.
If the DVD-RW is supported by the hardware, and software, then you should be able to erase the disk using Disk Utility, and reuse it.
I have not found any way to do multiple sessions on a DVD-R/RW on a Mac.
 
I now have another anomaly. After speaking with Plextor support, I have been told that the engineers that my case has been escalated to could not reproduce the problem that I described. I was told by the representative that I spoke with @ Plextor that this sounds that since the DVD recorder works well within the OEM version of Nero that came with the recorder & since from a Macintosh the engineers @ Plextor could not reproduce the problem that it sounds as if the recording software could be the problem. I responded to them saying "How can this be when two different OSes on two different hard drives in the same computer OSX v10.3.9 "Panther" & OSX v10.2.8 "Jaguar" run into the same issue" & to that the representative responded "I am sorry that we "Plextor" do not have a solution for you". Funny isn't it when there is no fix to go ahead & blame the least likely culprit, the CD/DVD recording software.
 
Ignoring Toast completely for the moment - Is your issue still that you cannot re-use a DVD-RW after it has been written once?
What procedure do you use to erase the DVD-RW. It must be erased before you can re-use the disk, and no software can erase other than Disk Utility, AFAIK. Does the erase from Disk Utility successfully complete? Probably should take at least a couple of hours.
 
Yes the issue is most definitely with the reuse of DVD-RW/+RWs. I am using Toast Titanium v7.0.2 & performing a full/long erase. Even then I am still unable to use the media again.
 
Could be worthwhile to take your external burner to a Mac running 10.4.2 or later. The substantial changes in the Disk Utility may make the difference, and the OS X supports many more devices. You may find Tiger just fixes the problem.

Have you tried the Disk Utility for this erase?
 
drmacintosh said:
As I stated in my earlier post, I am using Toast to perform a long/full erase of my media.
Click to expand...

Ah, thought I read you right... Have you ever tried Disk Utility (which should work!)
I have heard that Toast just can't do that successfully (erase CD/DVD-RW)
 
That is just it, I have another issue where in attempting to upgrade from "Panther" OS X v10.3.9 to "Tiger" OS X v1.4x, I am running into hard drive space related problems, iDefrag and Disk Warrior related issues. So to answer the question, I do not have another computer running "Tiger" that I can test out my recorder on.
 
In this day of cheap hard drives, space shouldn't be an issue for you. If you have two hard drives internally, you can temp-swap a good hard drive to install Tiger, as a good test.

so, you don't know anyone with a Mac running Tiger, or don't have any store that sells Macs where you could try out your (basically portable) external burner?

Just tossing out some possibilities for you, hope it helps....
 
Thank you for the different suggestions. Right now I need to pinch pennies being on unemployment and working contract computer consulting jobs that last shorter than the anticipated target of several months. I am trying to get something a lot more permanent in the salary range that I would like & also am used to from a job that I had over 7 plus years & got laid off 03-2003 from due to outsourcing, :( oh those were the days :). Enough of that, now back on to my original issue. I understand your point completely. HD are pretty inexpensive right now. I just purchased over the internet an IBM/Hitachi Deskstar 250GB for my Wintel computer for less than 90 American dollars. If I could find a drive in-the-meantime that "Tiger" could be installed onto right now, believe you me I would in a heart beat as I have two internal ATA100 HD, one the original Maxtor 20GB & another IBM/Hitatchi 20GB & two other internal IBM/Hitatchi Ultrastar drives one a 9.1 GB 10000 RPM 80 MByte/sec & the other a 18.2GB 15000 RPM 160 MByte/sec connected via an Adaptec 29160N for Macintosh SCSI card. All of the storage was purchased over 6 years ago when first I was working a good job and second when it cost you to purchase good storage especially SCSI. Now can you say what type of Macintosh only reseller would allow me to attach my external DVD burner up to their system High Speed USB 2.0 or Firewire 1394. Plus if they do not have Toast, what then. Thanks again.
 
drmacintosh said:
... Plus if they do not have Toast, what then. Thanks again.
Click to expand...
Ah, but you are not looking for Toast. You have the current version now, but Disk Utility (included with OS X) would be on any OS X Mac. Disk Utility is your friend. I believe your problem involves incomplete erasure. Have you tried Disk Utility? You have not answered that question yet. Your Disk Utility with 10.3.9 might not help, but you should make the attempt. The Disk Utility included with Tiger might work if the Panther version fails.
 
I just finished long erasing a DVD+RW with Disc Burner in "Panther" OSX v10.3.9. It has successfully erased but then when going into Roxio Toast Titanium v7.0.2 and proceed to burn onto the erased DVD+RW it reports that it can not because the long erase with Disc Burner is not recognized by Toast Titanium. :(
 
drmacintosh said:
I just finished long erasing a DVD+RW with Disc Burner in "Panther" OSX v10.3.9. It has successfully erased but then when going into Roxio Toast Titanium v7.0.2 and proceed to burn onto the erased DVD+RW it reports that it can not because the long erase with Disc Burner is not recognized by Toast Titanium. :(
Click to expand...
Sorry - I missed your answer to this question -
'Have you ever tried to erase a DVD-RW using Disk Utility (which should work!)?' - and not some other utility. This is not something difficult or unusual, and could help you out. You might be assuming that 'Disk Burner' uses the same internal routines that Disk Utility uses, but the attempt will answer that question.
 
Look for "Disk Utility" in /Applications/Utilities. Shortcut: Click Finder or the desktop background (which is Finder) and press Apple key + Shift + U to get to the Utilities folder. Double-click Disk Utility. Put in your RW disc, wait for it to show up in Disk Utility. Click on your dvd burner, click the Erase tab at the top of Disk Utility, and click on Erase.

Doug
 
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