Travelmate 8104 Wont burn some media at above 2x!

Hello everyone,

I'm new to the boards, joined them to get advice on buying a new notebook but I need some advice on how to fix my current one..

I have an Acer Travelmate 8104 with a DVD dual layer writer, and it writes *most* media pretty well, (although it stalls a bit at 8x...8x burns take longer than 4x burns because Nero's buffer keeps running down..god knows why).

my problem is, it wont burn 16x media at anything above 2x! This is not a Nero issue, CloneCD and other burning software have the same problem. And it is like this irregardless of media. BUT today i bought a spindle of 8x DataLifes but they wont burn at anything above 2x either! think it's got something to do with the 'new' standard, ISO 9002? And apparently new firmware is needed.

Now I know acer and Lg dont release new firmware (or so i've heard). Has anyone had any success with third party somethingorothers? This is absolutely unacceptable that the dvd writer wont burn a veyr significant portion of DVDs on the market...

thanks,
Rocaveli

 

Have you tried reinstalling the burner's drivers?

 

Are you in DMA mode?

 

from where? I just reformatted my computer with the Acer disk so...drivers should all be "reinstalled"

 

what is DMA mode..?

 

yes im in DMA mode
should i turn this off? that seems counterproductive no?

 

Definitely stay in DMA mode. The question was asked because sometimes optical drives drop into PIO mode, which causes a major performance hit.

What model is your optical drive and what media are you using. You can use DVD Identifier to get the media details.

John

 

thanks for the replies,

my optical drive model is HL-DT-ST DVD-RAM GMA-4080N, from my Travelmate 8104WLMi laptop.

The media is irrelevant, the problem surfaces with HP, Verbatim, Datalife, Sony, Fujitsu, and other media...it's more a question of how 'new' the media is, the newer ones are the ones giving me the headaches..

 

LG GMA-4080N: How much have you used the drive? Optical drives are probably the least durable part of notebooks.

If you can't live with 2X, I see two options: (i) Try different media in the hope you find something which the drive likes (Google might reveal some more compative media types); or (ii) If you can see how to remove the existing ODD, then the best solution will be to replace it. If the ODD is a standard 1/2" high unit, then probably any other 1/2" ODD will fit. The only task is to swap the fascia. You may want to look for the Liteon ODDs which are reasonably priced. If you can't find a bare drive, then the external units are also relatively inexpensive and you open one up and take the drive out.

Hope this helps,

John

 

Taiyo Yudens are the best discs.

 

I had a problem like this before and it was caused by the virtual CD/DVD programs such as CloneCD/Alcohol 120. Since I had those installed I could never burn anything above 2x without having lots of errors.

Try removing those programs, and if it still happens, do a clean format and do NOT install virtual CD/DVD software, install a normal burning program such as Nero or NTI CD/DVD Creator.

 

thanks for the replies, I dont think it's a media problem, I guess my drive might be kaput...It's been like this since the very beginning so it's not a longevity issue...I guess I should have had acer fix it under warranty, whatever no big deal. I still think a firmware flash from a similar model might fix the problem...I'll research the matter when i get high speed internet and i'll post my results here.