frigid cd-rw drive

[roosterbooster80]

hello, all.

my ibook won't burn.

whenever i try to burn a compilation data cd-r, i always get this error report: "error verifying disc. this cd might not work." after consulting admin adel g., who said that it could either be one of two things: (1) the cd drive is busted, or (2) the media i'm using is faulty - i bought another CD-R brand, but it was also rejected by the drive.

so all things considered, i should consider my cd drive thoroughly busted.

but.

when i burn audio CDs on iTunes, it works just fine. i run CDs, VCDs, DVDs (and dibidis) on it, and they're all just peachy.

i have 2G worth of files to burn. i'm this close to buying an external cd-rw burner just to get the deed done.

help!

[penmanila]

just to get rid of the usual suspects, have you tried repairing permissions with disk utility? have you tried burning with toast instead of the built-in burner?

[roosterbooster80]

Originally posted by penmanila
just to get rid of the usual suspects, have you tried repairing permissions with disk utility? have you tried burning with toast instead of the built-in burner?

yes, sir butch, i have. i've used cocktail and the mac os x installation disc 1. unfortunately, i don't have roxio.

is there any way to test if the cd drive is truly out to pasture?

[extremyks]

Try downloading a cd burning software at versiontracker.com. Make a search for Firestarter FX.

[penmanila]

hmm, curiouser and curiouser... what's intriguing is that you can still burn audio cd's with itunes, which means that your burner works. i'd be willing to bet it's a software glitch somewhere.

[extremyks]

If that happens to me, I could have reinstalled Panther to make sure I have a clean OS. But hey thats me and the advantage of having partitions on your hard drive.

Beside I only trust Toast / Firestarter for burning. I hardly use the built in burning utility of Apple.

[roosterbooster80]

thanks mike and sir butch. but here's the rub.

just now, using OS X's built in burning utility, i burned a data CD at 24x speed, instead of the default maximum.

the same damn error appeared - "cannot verify disc... yada yada eat my shorts". i put the supposedly unverified CD in the slot, and lo and behold! it works! it can actually read the thing.

what went wrong?

p.s. there is no way i can do a clean install right now. is there a less drastic alternative to this?

EDIT: Ok, 10 seconds later, i'm eating my shorts. the cd isn't working, after all. it read it for 5 glorious minutes, then went comatose inside the drive.



[Edited on 4-8-2004 by roosterbooster80]

[roosterbooster80]

just an update: my drive works fine now. all i needed to do was to repair permissions again (using the bundled disc utility software). also, one of the 400mb files that i kept trying to burn turned out to be corrupted.

thanks again.

[mgd]

Originally posted by roosterbooster80
just an update: my drive works fine now. all i needed to do was to repair permissions again (using the bundled disc utility software). also, one of the 400mb files that i kept trying to burn turned out to be corrupted.

thanks again.

hmmm... I'm wondering why it became corrupted in the first place :dry:

[roosterbooster80]

hay.

my iBook's really on the blink.

no sooner do i get the drive to burn, i can't multi-task on it anymore. before, i could watch two-three videos if i wished, simultaneously even, with Mail, Address Book and Word open all at the same time. now, the video will only run smoothly if i quit all apps and focus on Quicktime. even typing this message is a chore, the letters appear in slo-mo.

mgd, i don't know for certain if it was corrupted (the file), but i tried burning the disc without it, and it worked.

conclusion by elimination, i guess.

[Edited on 4-12-2004 by roosterbooster80]