Nero stops burning at 8 or 10%...

firmware - i havent upgraded the firmware because the shop that swapped my drive told me that the only reason they were swapping it was because pioneer had told them that their firmware (1.55 + 1.57) was faulty and not to go above 1.50

ritek - i am only using ritek again now for economy. i have also burnt 10 each of traxdata, verbatim data life plus, datawrite etc. using go4, go5 and mcc lead ins. all had the same result. i know ritek are not the best and there are a lot of fakes around too, but if the problem was purely media the fault would occur at diffferent places and not on the same % each time.

speed - i am burning at 8x purely because when i burnt at 4x and even 2x, i had the same result.

it sure is a teaser - but to be fair i havent lost a disc since i put the new drive in (altho it still stops for a bit and then continues)
as long as it keeps burning i will just leave it be. fingers x'ed

 

creaky informed me about this one...i have had NO problems with the pioneer dvr-109 upgraded firmware, i actually crossflashed mine from the 1.57 (which is NOT buggy from my personal experience regardless of what "pioneer told them") to the buffalo firmware for bitsetting

more info can be found here about the process:

http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/210801

i have since crossflashed, but before you do it, MAKE SURE you know ALL the steps before hand as i take NO responsibility if you do it wrong.

regarding the media, i have used HUNDREDS of Ritek G05s that are flawless, BUT, since the the crossflash, i booktype my dvd+r to dvd-rom for compatibility...and use Taiyo Yuden dvd+r media 8x. YUDEN000T02 coding~

i have NOT tried burning to the G05 riteks for almost 2 years now, so as creaky suggested, MIGHT be a media issue for now...consider using Verbatim MCC003 8x dvd+r and Taiyo Yudens i mentioned before...

wish you the best of luck if you DO choose to crossflash, just be careful and FULLY understand all the steps involved...but, when i had the regular 1.57 firmware...i never had any problems personally...there was nothing "buggy/faulty" about it.