[NTLUG:Discuss] DVD writing problems.

[Chris Cox]

Steve Baker wrote:
> I'm planning to upgrade my main box from SuSE 9.3 to OpenSuSE 11.0, so I 
> need to burn a DVD full of freshly downloaded goodies.  Sadly, my aging 
> CD-Writer can't write DVD's - so I went out and bought a shiney new $40 
> Pioneer DVR-116D and a box of DVD-RW disks - which the drive claims to 
> be able to write at 20x.  It claims to be able to write all of the 
> combinations of -RW, -R, +RW, etc.
> 
> I'm using K3b for burning disks...been using it for years.
> 
> I can burn CD-ROMs with the new drive - no problem - so it's obviously 
> connected up alright.  But K3b refuses to burn an iso-DVD.
> 
> It picks up the drive name OK - it recommended that I turn on IDE DMA 
> for it - which I did - and it recommended that I remove the drive's 
> entry in /etc/fstab - which I did.  I tried upgrading to the latest 
> version of K3b - it doesn't make a difference.  It looks like K3d 
> doesn't recognise that there is a disk in the tray - it keeps telling me 
> to load a disk and no matter what I do with the drive's disk tray - K3d 
> just doesn't seem to notice.
> 
> Seems weird that it can detect that a CD is in the drive but not a DVD.
> 
> At this point, I'm completely stuck.  I can't imagine how this could be 
> going wrong.  Help!

Well... I know I've done this with 9.3... even dual layer DVDs.

So, it's not specifically a 9.3 or k3b issue (at least it doesn't
have to be an issue).

It's possible that the DVD drive needs a flash update (I've had
that problem with a Sony unit... it didn't appear to work... I
upgraded the firmware on the DVD drive... and presto!).

Sometimes, vendors force the DVD drive to go throug some kind
of initialization before they work... esp true for region
coding... but possibly for other things.  Unfortunately
that usually means Windows (sigh).

Of course, at lot of times, I would upgrade my system to
using a newer K3b from Packman (for example).  But 9.3,
it too old for that to work now.  But if it matters,
it wasn't too long ago I had a 9.x (I think 9.3) running
in our datacenter with dual drives... it was specifically
for burning CD/DVDs... and that one I know for sure was
just plain jane K3b from the distro.

Will the drive understand any kind of DVD? (not writable ones
for example).