Haomaru, Are you using printable discs? Everything looks OK with the GSA-4160B up until it loses focus. Make sure Nero is up to date, too. The drive will determine the default settings and pass them onto Nero, but Nero has to work with both the drive and the medium. Nero is already up to 7.5.1.1., and the early versions of Nero 7 were notably buggy. In fact, your version may require removal before installing version 7.5.1.1. because some of the bugs were in the updating system. Just don't lose your license number. If you don't have it on your original disc, look it up in Nero 7.0.8.2 before uninstalling the older version, and write it down so that you can enable 7.5.1.1 after installing this latest version.
Printable discs come in three varieties: thermal, ink-jet, and photo-reactive. Thermal discs have a smooth coating on them (usually white) that allows a special printer with a waxy ribbon to deposit a single color on the surface. These printers are quite expensive. Ink-jet printable discs have a coating that absorbs water so that even some inexpensive printers from Epson can print multi-color images on the discs. Ink-jet printable discs are typically white or silver on top. Imation and Taiyo Yuden have both developed new ink-jet coatings that prevent water from altering the inks after printing, the biggest problem for ink-jet images. Photo reactive coatings such as LightScribe use the same laser diode in the drive to draw a mono-color image on the surface of the disc. In all of these cases, the coatings have to be stable so that curing does not cause any shrinkage of the disc that pulls the edges up. This can cause problems with DVDs having the outer edge out of focus from the reading laser beam. Paper labels do the same thing, but they are usually more damaging than poor printable coatings. A particularly poor disc will be so out of focus that even the recording laser will fail toward the end of the disc.
Oh ok thanks Joe, Ur knowledge on these stuff is amazing, thanks for the help really appreciate the time.
One more question Joe, how long does the average burner last, or does it depends on how many things u have burned(movies, music etc.)
From my personal experience I rate a burners life to about a year, give or take a couple months. For some it may be more or less, but I burn quite often and put a lot of miles on my drives. I don't have a dedicated reader in either of my computers. I use my Sony lite-on as a read/write in my main rig and my benq as a read/write in my 2nd rig, which will put added stress on the drives. Recently Ive noticed my Sony making louder noises, and sloppier sounds when opening and closing the drive. It's not even a year old but sounds like it is on its way out after about 2000 writes.
A drive's diode should be good for 20,000 recordings of a full disc at 8X speed using 140 milliwatts of power. Drives capable of 16X recording and utilizing the full 16X speed use diodes capable of more power, but that full power shortens the life span of the diode. However, recording at 8X instead of 16X will prolong the life of the diode perhaps beyond the 20,000 recordings. Blue laser diodes are failing at 1/4 the lifetime of standard red diodes--a major problem for the first high definition recorders. Slower recording speeds also lengthen the life of drive bearings; but since the drive spins at its fastest rotational speed at the beginning of the disc, the difference is less significant than that for the diode. Faster speeds mean much more work for the diode than the drive motors or bearings.
Ok thanks for the info Joe, so ur say once i burn at 8X i should get about 20,000 recordings roughly?
I've never had a burner last that long lol. Sounds more theoretical than proven because I know other members on here have had drives crap out on them much sooner than 20,000 burns. I doubt anyone has has even hit 20,000 burns between all their burners combined (with the exception of maybe a couple poeple.) I've had 2 burners fizzle out on me over the past 2 1/2 or 3 years. My 3rd burner is on its way out, and my 4th burner (BenQ) performs fine because it's new. I'm not even close to 20,000 burns and I've had 4 drives now, and I'll be on my 5th once my Sony takes a dump.
Ok thanks, so about how many burns on average u think a drive can take ?, cause mine stopped functioning properly after about 8months and about 1000 burns, it was still burning ok for a while but only at like a 70 % rate, i got many burn failed, with a msg saying burn failed due to PM updated failure, until it reached the point where it burned the movies, but they could not be view so i changed the burner
Sounds about right I guess. How about anyone else? What is the average durration of your burners? Like I said before mine last me about a year or 2000 burns.
