I recently got new Lite-On iHAS424-98 DVDR/W SATA drive to replace a
Plextor PX-870 which was incapable of burning dual-layer media compatible
with my Yamaha player. The Lite-On burns the same Verbatim DVD+R DL media
that is fully compatible at 4X ( 2.4X media ) as long as I have SmartBurn
software open while burning. However, when I've tried burning Taiyo Yudin
DVD-R 16X single layer media using Nero 9 I get burn failures a number of
times. The SmartBurn shows speed available for this media up to 24X though I
have only burned at 18X and run into the problem. I'm considering
remounting the Plextor PX-870A drive along with the SATA Lite-On and using
the Plextor for single-layer media and the Lite-On for dual-layer media. I
would have to have Plex Utilities software for the Plextor drive along with
the SmartBurn for the Lite-On. I burn using Nero 9 and ImageBurn 2.50 for
DVDR media, and use Fuerio for burning music CDRs in a Plextor Premium CD/RW
drive I also have. My Nero also has InCD 6 packet burning software which I
could maybe remove if needed to avoid conflict with other stuff. It didn't
appear to conflict with the Plex Utilities alone or the SmartBurn alone but
I don't know if there would be conflict with both of them open at the same
time. I will wait till next week to try to mount the extra Plextor drive
again and hope I don't run into software conflicts that make it failure.
Herb

"Cyborg-HAF" <cyborg_haf (AT) hotmail (DOT) com> wrote

Did you try at a lower speed. I now never burn DVDs faster than 8x on any
drive. It always produced inferior results.


InCD does seem to have a reputation for being unreliable and causing
problems.

I'm pretty satisfied with my Pioneer DVR-112 DVD burner.
But I always burn DVDs (including DL) at 8x or less and CDs at 24x or less.

--

Brian Gregory. (In the UK)
ng (AT) bgdsv (DOT) co.uk
To email me remove the letter vee.

The Plextor PX-870A would reliably burn the 16X DVD-R Taiyo Yudin disks
at 18X. I burned one as a early burn with the Lite-On at 18X in Nero and
got good verify, but just got 3 coasters in row a couple of days ago. I
tried both 18X and 16X ( the disks rated speed ). As last attempt, I used
ImageBurn to burn one at 18X and was successful using that software.
Lite-On doesn't have firmware update for the new iHAS424-98, in fact it
doesn't even list it in the drive names for registering the drive. The
software included a disk with only Nero8 Essentials and a .pdf of the drive
manuals. I looked at Lite-On's site for downloads of utilities for the
drive, and only could find SmartBurn3.51 , Booktype1.35 , and a general
Smartpack that only seems to check to updates and nothing else works. The
SmartBurn is good for checking media for what speed burns you supposedly get
but the Settings page is fully grayed out and unusable even though
CDRLabs.com's test of the same drive showed the settings page working. The
drive is supposedly a LightScribe capable drive, but Lite-On's site and the
retail drive's included disk include the software. The drive is SATA drive,
and I had good Plextor PX-810SA sata drive that finally died after over 800
burns ( off warranty ) and don't problems with any sata hard-drives either
so this isn't bus problem. I guess I need to use ImageBurn to burn the
single layer media while still being able to use Nero for dual-layer media.

"Brian Gregory [UK]" <ng (AT) bgdsv (DOT) co.uk> wrote

"Cyborg-HAF" <cyborg_haf (AT) hotmail (DOT) com> wrote

Oh yes they generally verify after burning at 16x but I always found
programs like Nero CD-DVD Speed would reveal that they were inferior to
disks burned at lower speeds. (Many more PIE and PIF errors).


It's all very odd.

What is SmasrtBurn?
I haven't come across it before.


--

Brian Gregory. (In the UK)
ng (AT) bgdsv (DOT) co.uk
To email me remove the letter vee.

SmartBurn is one of Lite-On's utilities that identifies media and gives
burn rate speeds available. It also is suppose to give drive settings, but
the page for them is grayed out and unusable. I got the impression in
CDRLabs.com's test of the same drive that those settings should work with
this drive. I just tried to use Lite-On's online support chat, but timed
out when trying to answering one of the tech's question and lost the chat.
I'll try this again later to see if they can give me an idea of a solution.

"Brian Gregory [UK]" <ng (AT) bgdsv (DOT) co.uk> wrote

"Cyborg-HAF" <cyborg_haf (AT) hotmail (DOT) com> wrote

In that case it's very odd that having Smartburn running while using the
drive makes any difference to it's operation.

--

Brian Gregory. (In the UK)
ng (AT) bgdsv (DOT) co.uk
To email me remove the letter vee.

"Brian Gregory [UK]" <ng (AT) bgdsv (DOT) co.uk> wrote


I should add that the quality testing feature of Nero CD-DVD Speed (and a
few other programs can do it) does not work with all drives. It works on
Lite-ON drives and I think it works on Plextor drives that are truly made by
Plextor, and there are probably others but there are also many drives that
do not give access to that information.

Some good boards with knowledgeable people who can help with CD and DVD
burners are:
The Firmware Page forum: http://forum.rpc1.org/
Club MyCE: http://club.myce.com/

--

Brian Gregory. (In the UK)
ng (AT) bgdsv (DOT) co.uk
To email me remove the letter vee.