It doesn't seem like I've had my burner long but I think I've burnt around 150 DVDs. I'm not sure how many a drive can burn before it dies but I've got an NEC ND3550A. Recently I've experienced problems of some burning ok and others being picked up as blanks when I put them back in the drive although obviously it won't let me burn to them twice. I just updated the firmware from v1.05 to 1.07 and still the same things are happening. So, I'm now thinking of buying a new burner. I've just read the sticky regarding which features a drive should have and have taken that all on board. What I'm wondering is what would be a good drive to go for next? Can anyone recommend a good burner? I can't seem to locate any suppliers of a decent named drive online. I live in the UK and really would like to stay with buying from within the UK.
Media-related issues such as brand/quality is the cause of 99% of DVD-related problems. Read my sig below on media issues. My 3550a is going on 2000 burns. I use the Liggy's 1.06 Bitsetting firmware. In short, if Verbatim and genuine Taiyo-Yuden Premium don't work, and you use a reasonable recording speed, then you might be able to blame your drive.
Many thanks, I'll take a look at getting some other media for the drive then. I did wonder why my CD-Rs burn fine all the time and my DVD burns are "iffy"...
woohoo thanks Ripper, didn't realise they were the same! I've used SVP a lot in the past as their HQ is close to me (20 mins drive away)