[conspire] Re: CD-RW laser going into failure?

[Eric De Mund]

Daniel, All,

Eric De Mund <ead at ixian.com>:
] 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?

Daniel Gimpelevich <daniel at gimpelevich.san-francisco.ca.us>:
] At what speed are you burning? Does the same problem occur with CD-RW
] media? Did you flash the firmware to version 1.14? Changelog:
] 
] http://www.teac.co.jp/dspd/download/firmware/cd-w552e/fwcdrome.html

Thank you for the TEAC firmware upgrade pointer; I appreciate it. My
unit did have firmware version 1.09, and now it has version 1.14. Sadly,
though, the upgrade didn't do the trick.

I'm burning at 16x and 12x. And in an attempt to "not miss any bits", I
even attempted a burn at 8x. No luck. I still received read errors
approximately 2/3 of the way through the data, which is the 694 MB
strong <KNOPPIX_V4.0.2CD-2005-09-23-EN.iso>.

And that fairly consistent position of the first read errors (2/3 to 3/4
of the way through the disc/data) leads me to wonder, naively, "Can the
laser no longer sustain sufficient burning strength after it's been on
(burning) for a certain number of minutes?"

Tell me more about CD-RW versus CD-R discs. I don't believe I have any
CD-RW discs here with which to perform a test. What's your thinking
here?

Finally, a five-brush laser lens cleaner disc failed to have any posi-
tive effect upon this post-burn data verification. I still get read
verification errors at 65% of the way through the data. I'm thinking the
drive may simply need to be replaced. Do others here get more use out of
a CD burner than the 12-18 months of heavy use I seem to get?

Cheers, and thank you for your help, Daniel,
Eric
--
"In a display of perverse brilliance, Carl the repairman mistakes a
room humidifier for a mid-range computer but manages to tie it into
the network anyway." --The 5th Wave

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