CD/DVD compatibility

I've heard of it, but I've never owned a CD or DVD burner that cared whether I used + or - media (e.g. CD-R vs. CD+R). However, my T500 just refused to record on a TDK CD-R today. After trying a couple different discs, I popped in a DVD+R, and it worked. I bit wasteful for 80MB or data, but it was my Acronis bootable rescue disc, so I didn't have much choice.

My question is, are these drives actually only compatible with + media (I'm only assuming mine will work with CD+R discs), or might there be a problem with mine? I don't have any CD+R discs to try at the moment.

 

I doubt it is regarding the formats specifically, but sometimes some drives don't play well with certain media. I would try another CD-R from a different brand and see how that goes.

 

I had read a post from someone - can't recall which forum it was on - who actually had to check some obscure setting for the drive to keep it from trying to format every recordable disc he inserted. He was unable to burn discs until someone pointed out that setting. Anyone have any idea what it might be?

 

That particular setting is for Packet Writing (treats a CD like a normal drive [drag and drop files]). I don't know the name of the service in Vista, but it's never hassled me.

There is no CD+R format. CD-R should work fine, but different brands of media have quirks. I would try a different brand of CD-R (e.g. Verbatim) and see if that works. If it doesn't you may have a defective drive.

As a sidenote - the DVD/CD-RW in my T40 did not initially read DVD+R discs (it read CD-R and DVD-R fine). Eventually, it stopped reading DVDs all together (but still read and wrote CDs). I had this replaced under warranty, and the new drive (a few model numbers up, but still Mata), read DVD+R, DVD-R, and DVD+RW disks.

If you can't get a different brand of CD-R media to work, call Lenovo. They should overnight you a replacement drive and you can swap it out yourself in about 15 seconds.

 

The possible offending software is called Drive Letter Access (DLA). I believe Lenovo preinstalls Sonic DLA, even on Vista which has native support for UDF packet writing. I always uninstall DLA, as I only use mastered mode to burn CD/DVD.

 

Interesting. This is on a clean Vista Ultimate install, so it wouldn't be a problem with anything on Lenovo's end (well, unless the drive is bad). Of course when I got home from work, I found that the wife and kids had gone through all my recordable CD's, so I'll have to pick some more up tomorrow and try it.