Anyone had a computer CD burner die while extracting tracks? I did.

[KeithH]

This was scary for a few minutes tonight. I recently started collecting first pressings of CDs. Since these CDs are generally rare, I copy them to CD-Rs and use the CD-Rs for everyday playback. For the record, I am using a Dell Dimension L1100R desktop computer with an internal NEC burner. My burning program is Adaptec Easy CD Creator 4.0. Both the burner and software had always served me well. Well, until tonight.

I was trying to copy a first pressing of Rod Stewart Camouflage, when all of a sudden, the computer CD burner died. I was trying to extract tracks from the disc to the hard drive, when it appeared that the program froze in the middle of track 2. I figured it was a software glitch, but I couldn't get the CD burner to eject the CD. I decided to do a "hard reboot" of the computer. When it rebooted, I was able to eject the disc. I thought I was business, but I wasn't.

I started extracting tracks to the hard drive again. Everything seemed to be going fine, so I walked away from the computer for awhile. When I came back, the burning program showed that it was frozen in the middle of extracting track 4. Once again, I could not eject the CD from the burner. I did another hard reboot and ejected the CD. This is where it gets weird. The CD smelled like something was burning, and there is now a cloudy area on the CD. My theory is that the laser assembly burned up, and perhaps did so with the disc frozen (i.e., the assembly heated up and stopped spinning the disc). I could care less about the CD burner. However, I feared that my Rod Stewart CD was dead. Fortunately, it seems to play just fine, as I am playing it as I type. Both my boombox and a Sony SCD-C555ES could read the table of contents just fine, and I am playing the disc on the 'C555ES now.

After having the CD out of the computer burner for a few minutes, the odor dissipated. However, the cloudy mark seems to be permanent. In the end, I don't care about the mark on the CD, so long as it plays fine. With these rare first pressings, I am used to discs with blemishes, scratches, etc. It really takes a lot to kill a CD.

Have any of you had something like this happen to you? It's a good thing this didn't happen this morning. In the morning, I was making a CD-R of the Elvis 24 KARAT HITS! DCC gold CD. Had the Elvis disc been stuck when the burner died, I would have blown a fuse.

[Ed Bishop]

Two obvious bits of advice:

DO NOT USE THAT BURNER AGAIN, until you a)go online and go to Dell's tech/help site and ask them what could be happening, and b)see what some of our smart PC guys have to say about this.

Make sure you don't have a ton of background programs(some of which you might not even know about)running; anything that eats up HD space is certain to cause you problems somewhere along the line. The leaner your PC's programs(beyond the essential kind and the ones you use often)
the more likely you won't encounter major problems.

I've had discs stop before(though not during burning); a warning panel will pop up explaining something went wrong with whatever, and then suggest restarting Windows. Fine. You shut down naturally if you can, or just shut off with the tower's power button if you can't do it the other way.
As you found out, once you're back in normal mode, the disc will eject normally. But I must say, I've never had what you describe happen, and it's a warning of a deeper problem. I know little about PC's, so the pros here should be able to advise you better than I. What happened, however, just sounds bad, and must be dealt with immediately, if not sooner.

ED:cool:

[Michael]

I'm in the process of getting a new burner. Mine didn't burn up, just died!
Occasionally the PC would crash during burning?? Hopefully I'll be up and running too. Definitely call Dell/NEC, maybe they'll compensate you with a new burner!:cool: Thankfully it wasn't Elvis! Yikes....

[BradOlson]

My first burner died after I burned a Gordon Lightfoot CD-R for a music critic in Goldmine magazine. With my new burner, I'm back in business.

[Ed Bishop]

Originally posted by cbsolson
My first burner died after I burned a Gordon Lightfoot CD-R for a music critic in Goldmine magazine. With my new burner, I'm back in business.

Brad, what kind of burner did you have, the brand name, the speeds it allowed for burning? Just curious...:)

ED:cool:

[KeithH]

Thanks for the replies, everyone. I just got back from Circuit City with a TDK velocd burner. It offers 52x write, 24x rewrite, and 48x read/rip. It's $80 after a mail-in rebate. We'll see how it goes.

[Michael]

Originally posted by KeithH
Thanks for the replies, everyone. I just got back from Circuit City with a TDK velocd burner. It offers 52x write, 24x rewrite, and 48x read/rip. It's $80 after a mail-in rebate. We'll see how it goes.

A Hot Rod Indeed! I never burn past 4X.:)

[BradOlson]

It's a Mitsumi CR-48XATE and it goes up to 32x and is Disc-At-Once capable. One of the cheapest burners available but it is a very reliable burner. It does extract audio very well also. I use Nero Burning ROM 5.5.5.1

[Ed Bishop]

Originally posted by cbsolson
It's a Mitsumi CR-48XATE and it goes up to 32x and is Disc-At-Once capable. One of the cheapest burners available but it is a very reliable burner. It does extract audio very well also. I use Nero Burning ROM 5.5.5.1

Bradley, what speed do you generally burn at? Again, just curious...

ED:cool:

[BradOlson]

I generally burn at 4x

[MagicAlex]

I am on my 4th burner and everytime that they've gone out they were able to still extract and read data but would not burn without locking up. That's a wild thing for your drive to do...to make a mark on your CD that is. Do you think it tried to write to it? Weird.

Good luck with the new one.

[Ed Bishop]

Originally posted by cbsolson
I generally burn at 4x

Same here; occasionaly at 6x, but never 8x...too much trouble.

ED:cool:

[Drew]

I have a Phillips CD burner that won't read an audio CD burned on the same drive. But if I take an audio CD's burned on that drive it to any other CDrom drive or CD player I've ever tried them on they work flawlessly. Someone explain that one to me...

Guess those Plextor burners really are the only way to go.

[Gary Freed]

I've had computers since 1985 and fortunately never had a problem with disc drives or CD-Rom Drives failure. I bought a DELL two years ago that
came with a CDR recorder. I hope my luck continues.

Dell usually is good about replacing parts.

[sgraham]

I have never experienced anything like that. I did read that some DVD players, generally older ones that are not marked as being "CR-R ready" can actually damage CD-R disks. I had one disk that I *think* this happened to. It was a Mitsui, and they are very high quality generally. This is the only CD-R I've ever had this happen to. I did play it on my older Pioneer DVD player, which was obviously not happy playing CD-R disks. Initally it worked fine, but it began to skip towards the end of the side, and the skipping got progressively worse, affecting more and more of the disk. Eventually I tried to copy it using a variety of drives, but all of them reproduced the glitches (even with EAC).

There was no visible damage, though. One theory is that the label, not the DVD player, was responsible. I sent it to Mitsui for analysis, but I have scant hope of hearing back from them.

That (inability to play CD-R disks well) was actually the primary reason for my getting rid of my DVD player, and getting me into the wonderful world of SACD/DVD-A/dts disks and surround sound.

[SamS]

Originally posted by KeithH
Thanks for the replies, everyone. I just got back from Circuit City with a TDK velocd burner. It offers 52x write, 24x rewrite, and 48x read/rip. It's $80 after a mail-in rebate. We'll see how it goes.

Keith,

I just got this burner for Xmas. Love it! Man, I write at 52X sometimes, discs turn out great! I can rip/write a entire disc in under 5 minutes very often.

[Grant]

Usually when burners die, they lose the ability to read discs well, or stop altogether. Then they develop writing errors. The quality of the CD-R writes go down too. This is what happened to my old Phillips-made HP 72001. Actually, a little spring gave away, but this is what can happen. I've never heard of a laser dying in anything.

[Grant]

Originally posted by cbsolson
I generally burn at 4x

I burn at 4x on the Plextor, and 2x on the old HP.

[KeithH]

Thanks again for the replies, everyone. For the record, I always burn at 4x. Regarding the burner that died, it really died. After I had the incident with the Rod Stewart disc, I put in a couple CDs, and the drive would not read them.

I installed the TDK internal drive last night without incident. However, I can't stand the software. I don't find it to be intuitive. As I said, I had been using Adaptec Easy CD Creator 4.0 with the old burner, and it is a very easy program to use. The first time I launched it, I was able to burn CDs without reading any manuals. The TDK software, unfortunately, is a pain. As a result, I ordered a replacement burner from Dell and will return the TDK burner. From the picture on dell.com, the burner I ordered looks identical to the burner I had. With the new burner, I get Dell Support, which has been pretty good in my experience. I also get Roxio Easy CD Creator software. On the software side, I believe Adaptec became Roxio awhile back, so hopefully the software is similar or identical to what I have been using.

I should have the burner from Dell this coming week. Hopefully I will be back in business soon.

P.S. I played the Rod Stewart CD in a boombox and the Sony 'C555ES last night. It plays just fine. :)

[Grant]

KeithH,

You don't have to use the TDK software! Just keep the CD Creator in your computer. Copy it so you have a backup. In fact, you can use any CD burning software you want!

[KeithH]

Grant, I had no problem extracting tracks from CDs to the hard drive with Easy CD Creator and the TDK burner. However, when I tried to burn the tracks from the hard drive to a CD-R, I got a message saying that the software could not locate a compatible recording device. :(

I got a replacement internal burner from Dell today and have installed it. I am now using Roxio Easy CD Creator 5.2, which is a newer version of the Adaptec Easy CD Creator 4.0 I used with the old Dell burner. 5.2 is just as easy to use as 4.0. The one thing I don't like about 5.2, however, is that it seems that the slowest write speed you can select (i.e. burning from the hard drive to a CD-R) is 8x. I see no option to write at 4x, which is the write speed I always used with 4.0. :(

In making CD-Rs of three different CDs with the new Dell burner and software this evening, I got one dud. One CD-R had static through much of the disc. I had already erased the tracks from the hard drive, so I can't say if something went wrong in extracting from the original CD to the hard drive or in burning from the hard drive to the CD-R (i.e., I would listen to the tracks on the hard drive if I still had them). I used 74-minute TDK CD-Rs that are rated up to 8x, and these are older discs. Perhaps the disc was at fault and I should use newer ones that are rated up to 24x or whatever. Hopefully there is nothing wrong with my burner. At least 2 of the 3 CD-Rs I made are fine. The thing that bothers me is that I never got CD-Rs with static with the old Dell burner and software.

Oh, by the way, I tried to use Adaptec Easy CD Creator 4.0 with the new Dell burner, but I got a message saying that the software could not recognize the new burner. This is why I installed 5.2. :(

[Grant]

Keith,

One reason CD Creator couldn't locate the burner is because there are no drivers available for your burner. What you could do is go to the Roxio website and download any update patches available. That TDK burner could probably have used an updated driver.

Some burners and hard drives operate better if you enable DMA (Direct Memory Access). In older Windows versions you could check this and reboot. I don't know about WinXP, though...

Next, good for you to pay attention to the rated record speed of blanks. They DO matter! My rule is that if a blank is rated for, say, 12x, use 8x or lower.

FWIW, I never trust the burners that come with computers because more than likely they will use el-cheapo burners.

Did you do the tests in CD Creator to find where your burner will perform? Did you run the installation disc that came with the drive? I have found that, while Windows may already offer a generic driver for your burner, it is best to install the ones that came with the unit anyway.

The CD ROM or burner that ripped the CD could have produced the static. I ALWAYS check my files in Cool Edit before comitting them to CD-R.

Some burners cannot burn lower than 8x or 4x. The Plextor on my wife's PC cannot burn at 2x.

[KeithH]

Grant, thanks for the all the information. I figured there was a driver problem between the old CD Creator program and the new burners. When I got the dialog box saying that CD Creator 4.0 could not find a recording device, it said that I might need to update my software. I clicked a button to do this, but it said there were no updates available. This might have been because 4.0 was an Adaptec program and the program went looked on Adaptec's web site. The new version is from Roxio. I briefly looked on Roxio's web site and didn't see what I was looking for. In any event, I am using CD Creator 5.2 now.

Regarding DMA, I am running Windows ME. Should I concerned about DMA? If so, how would I enable it?

Regarding the write speed, I had never burned at 8x until the new Dell burner forced me too. When I saw that the old TDK CD-Rs were rated up to just 8x, I figured that could be a problem. I have some Memorex and Sony CD-Rs on spindles that I believe are rated to 24x. I don't know for sure since I don't have the packaging any longer. These discs are not old, however.

You asked:

Did you do the tests in CD Creator to find where your burner will perform?

Can you elaborate on this? I believe I saw a "Test" option when you are looking to burn to a CD-R, but I have never tried it. What will the test do and is this what you are referring to?

I did receive a floppy disk with the new Dell burner, but I did not use it. The manual said something about Windows ME having the driver I need. Perhaps I will play with this a bit this evening.

What is Cool Edit? Is this a free program? How do you check for static? Are you simply listening to the files or doing something more advanced (looking at a frequency sweep)?

[Grant]

1) Roxio is part od Adaptec. Adaptec just created a seperate division for their computer media products, because Adaptec also made hardware like controller cards.

2) To enable DMA, go to Control Panel/System and hit the hardware profiles. Highlight the CD burner and hit properties. If the DMA box is NOT greyed out it means the drive may be DMA capable. Check the box if it is not already checked, and reboot the PC. If the drive is DMA capable, the box will remain checked after rebooting. The same guidelines go for enabling DMA on your hard drive.

2) Do those tests in CD Creator! They help the software to configure it's performance to the drive in use.

3) If that floppy has the drivers for your burner, it is best to use them despite what drivers Windows has. Windows has the drivers so the device will be plug-and-play. But that doesn't always means a GOOD plug-and-play! Windows provides a wizard to update drivers for your hardware in the control panel.

When Roxio CD Creator 5x came out, one of the complaints was that a lot of burners weren't supported. I would think this has been corrected.

Cool Edit? It is one of the most popular audio editing/multitracking programs around for the PC! Many of our forum members use it, and it comes at a good price! There are two flavors, Cool Edit 2000, and Cool Edit Pro. I'm surprised you havent seen all the many references to it on these forums! When I check the audio, I simply open the file in Cool Edit and inspect the wave visually, and play the file to make sure all is good. If I want to tweak anything, I can do it with Cool Edit (or Sound Forge, for that matter, I have both).