[conspire] CD-RW laser going into failure?

[Eric De Mund]

Gentlemen, Ladies, Members of the Court, Children of All Ages,

My 12-18-month-old TEAC CD-W552E CD-RW is having trouble burning low-end
CD-Rs these days. Is my laser just getting old and hence weak? Or do I
just need to go out and get a CD cleaner disc?

The offensive behavior is: I burn a CD (under Nero; this is under
Windows and not under Linux) and the burn, itself, seems to succeed, but
the data verification fails with e.g.

    Read error at sector 252281
    Read errors from sector 252300 to 252321
    Read errors from sector 252340 to 252341
    Read errors from sector 252360 to 252361
    Read errors from sector 252380

Now, I've stuck a nozzle of a can of air in the drive-with-ejected-tray,
and some dust did come out, but the read errors persist. Need I get a
cleaner disc? Or does this CD-RW, after having burned discs at the rate
of approximately 1 CD-R per day for the last year, now have a laser
that's not capable any longer of writing at full strength?

Regards, and thank you for indulging this hardware rather than linux
question,
Eric
--
"Emacs is a nice OS, but to compete with Linux or Windows it needs a
better text editor." --Alexander Duscheleit

Eric De Mund
email: <ead at ixian.com>