Can someone with a T/W500 Blu Ray drive check something for me?

Short version for previewers: Can this drive write to DVD-R dual layer?

I have a W500 with Vista 64 Business. It's a clean install on a new hard drive.

I recently have been struggling trying to my system to burn to dual layer DVDs. The problem is, the Panasonic Mata UJ 232A Blu Ray recordable drive doesn't even RECOGNIZE blank dual layer DVDs, let alone write to them.

I checked with Nero InfoTool and, sure enough, it tells me that the drive is incapable of writing to DVD+-R DL. This doesn't seem right to me, since the drive can do pretty much everything else, including writing dual layer Blu Ray discs. Also, as far as I can tell, other vendors (on eBay) say the drive can write DL DVDs. Plus, I think that is a pretty standard capability nowadays.

I thought it might be due to my fresh install, so I put the original hard drive back in to see if that was the case. I booted up on the factory drive, which is almost completely untouched, and even there I can't do anything with my blank DVD-R DL discs.

These are Memorex discs, which I hear aren't the best, but to me it seems clear that my machine, even from the factory, thinks this drive can't write to DVD-R DLs.

Can someone with the drive check this out for me? If you have Nero InfoTool, you can just run that and it tells you the drive's abilities.

 

According to the specs here it can, but I've never seen one. You might want to try some different discs. Verbatims are the best DL discs.

 

Yeah, I'm not sure the discs are the problem, though. Nero InfoTool gives me a list of the drive's capabilities, and DVD-R DL writing is specifically unchecked. I've never run a Blu Ray in it, but it told me I could.

 

Bump...I'm sure there are people out there with the Blu Ray drives.

 

As a $600 upgrade, I wouldn't be so sure.