Superdrive not recognizing DVD-R's

B

bunner bob

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My wife's G4 (867-ish mHz Quicksilver, DVR-103, 10.2.6) seems to have stopped recognizing DVR disks. She rarely uses them - I just went to back up her machine yesterday (it's been a few months) and first Retrospect Express reported some kind of catalog error when I inserted the last DVD-RW from the previous backup. I tried recreating the catalog, but it took all of a couple of seconds and didn't seem to do anything.

So I let Retrospect start with a new disk, but it gave the standard error report "drive needs cleaning/dirty heads/bad media" - which usually seems to mean bad media. Subsequent attempts with Imation DVD-Rs (NOT -RWs) also failed. Then tried just sticking in a blank DVD-R at the finder level, and it never showed up on the desktop.

I was able to complete the backup on CD-Rs however - the drive just seems to have lost its DVD-R capability.

Does this happen? Well I guess it does, since it did. Any ideas what's going on, and whether there's a cure?

-Bob
 
Hey Bob....I don't think I can help much, and if anything else, will probably bum you out a bit...but here's my story.

I have a Dual 1Ghz with a Superdrive. About 6 or 7 months ago I started making coasters out of CD's everytime I tried to burn one. I could still burn DVD's, at the time. A few weeks ago I finally bit the bullet and bought some blank DVD's very fearful of what I was sure would happen...and it did. Torched a DVD as well.

Funny thing is that the drive can still see and read commercial DVD's and CD's, but seems to have so-so success with burned media. Just last week I bit another bullet and purchased an external DVD burner. Sucks cause I can't use iDVD anymore, but I hope to get a cheap interal Pioneer drive that will be recognized sometime next year.

All-in-all the situation sucked, and still does. I haven't tried a cleaning method yet, but I might give it a shot just to see what happens.

Don't mean to bum you out, but you might want to check on some of the other functionality of the drive, keep an eye on it and start budgeting for that new internal.

Good luck man,
Eddie
 
bobw said:
Before doing anything else, do the cleaning. Get a DVD Cleaning kit.
Click to expand...

Any recommendations as to type? I don't know what's out there/how they work, but I imagine there's more than one method.

I'd think you'd have to swab off the lens with a little hi-test isopropyl, maybe blast a little canned air in there (though the latter might be damaging).
 
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