Need a good burner

[anonprivate]

Install
inxi
and run the command
inxi -Fxxx

I just ran inxi -F and noted in the info section:

'Memory: 634.4/998.2MB'

I know I have about 1GB of RAM, but what does 634.4 refer to?

I can't see much info on drives. No ref to DVD or floppy!

[Qqmike]

I know I have about 1GB of RAM, but what does 634.4 refer to?

Offhand, not sure. Is is some memory attribute (speed, ? )
I'm getting the same kind of result from inxi -F.

Memory:
free -m

Disks:
lsblk
(this doesn't show my CD/DVD, though)

Maybe the CD must be mounted?

List hardware:
lshw

List USB and PCI:
lsusb
lspci

I'm not getting much here, either:

cat /proc/sys/dev/cdrom/info
CD-ROM information, Id: cdrom.c 3.20 2003/12/17

drive name:
drive speed:
drive # of slots:
Can close tray:
Can open tray:
Can lock tray:
Can change speed:
Can select disk:
Can read multisession:
Can read MCN:
Reports media changed:
Can play audio:
Can write CD-R:
Can write CD-RW:
Can read DVD:
Can write DVD-R:
Can write DVD-RAM:
Can read MRW:
Can write MRW:
Can write RAM:

Maybe the command dmesg (with some arguments on it)?

On the run here, but I'm not able to gather much info on my CD/DVD, although it DOES work!

[Qqmike]

Another useful command is
sudo dmidecode
but I don't think I understand a lot of the output. I'm not seeing my CD/DVD device listed, but it might be there (very long output printout).

[dibl]

Do you think that the problems that I am experiencing could be explained by my using an eight year old burner? The system is eight years old.

Is the system a desktop or laptop?

You said "does not burn". Do you mean nothing whatever is written to the media, or do you mean that the burned media has errors? Are you talking about burning files, such as music or other data, or are you talking about burning a bootable image (ISO file) to the media?

One thing to do with the hardware is to open the computer and re-seat both ends of the data cable from the system board to the optical drive.

Yes, it is possible the old drive is dirty or failing somehow. I also wonder about your blank media. You aren't trying to use R/W erasable media, are you? That has long been problematic for burning ISO images -- some drives will work with it but many will not. I would advise buying a small pack of a different brand of blank media, and trying again with K3B. If it fails on new media of another brand, and if it is a desktop system, then I would advise spending the USD $20 and buying a replacement optical drive, assuming you can find one with the correct interface. If your optical drive is the old IDE ribbon cable interface, and/or you don't have an available SATA port on the system board, you might be stuck with either a more expensive external USB burner, or a whole new computer, depending on your requirements, budget, etc.

Personally, in the past 10 years I've built or rebuilt a half-dozen desktop systems and I've always had good results with the Asus optical drives, like this one. Or, if it is a laptop, then there are external USB drives that aren't terribly expensive, like this one.

[anonprivate]

Is the system a desktop or laptop?

You said "does not burn". Do you mean nothing whatever is written to the media, or do you mean that the burned media has errors? Are you talking about burning files, such as music or other data, or are you talking about burning a bootable image (ISO file) to the media?

One thing to do with the hardware is to open the computer and re-seat both ends of the data cable from the system board to the optical drive.

Yes, it is possible the old drive is dirty or failing somehow. I also wonder about your blank media. You aren't trying to use R/W erasable media, are you? That has long been problematic for burning ISO images -- some drives will work with it but many will not. I would advise buying a small pack of a different brand of blank media, and trying again with K3B. If it fails on new media of another brand, and if it is a desktop system, then I would advise spending the USD $20 and buying a replacement optical drive, assuming you can find one with the correct interface. If your optical drive is the old IDE ribbon cable interface, and/or you don't have an available SATA port on the system board, you might be stuck with either a more expensive external USB burner, or a whole new computer, depending on your requirements, budget, etc.

Personally, in the past 10 years I've built or rebuilt a half-dozen desktop systems and I've always had good results with the Asus optical drives, like this one. Or, if it is a laptop, then there are external USB drives that aren't terribly expensive, like this one.

Thank you for the very detailed response

My previous attempts at burning (ISO files) seem to have put some data on the disk, but it has been unreadable. I am mainly interested in burning ISO files, so that I can test OS's.

My system is a Dell Dimension E520, about eight years old, with the original DVD drive installed. Is this classed as old?

Yes, I often try to use the erasable RW disks. They seem better value for money because they can be reused.

I assume that you advise buying a small pack of DVD+R disks for testing. K3b does seem to have a good reputation. I note that in UBUNTU Brassero is installed ( I use kubuntu). Some people on the Net tell me it (Brassero) does not burn!

I would like to exhaust all possibilities before buying another drive. Imagine my disappointment if I fitted a new drive only to retain the problem.

I have not opened the tower for quite some time, but as a I recall, the DVD drive is connected to the Mobo via a SATA cable

Best wishes for the new year

[oshunluvr]

My experience with CD/DVD recorders is they do tend to fail at least as often as hard drives. My current drive is 2 years old and the computer it's in is 9 years old. This is the system's third drive.

However, assuming the drive is bad just due to age has no logical basis. I have a 12 year old Dell that was purchased used that my mother used (and used the dvd for movies regularly) for 5 years and it still has the original drive.

Unless you're willing to post specific drive specs (like the drive model number) and post actual results from various programs and do some actual testing, all we're going to be able to do is guess at your problem.

There are three possibilities: hardware failure (or a dirty lens), driver failure, burner software failure.

I would first try burning an ISO to a disk using dd thus avoiding any software issues. Then do a checksum of the burned disk to the ISO and see if they match.

[Qqmike]

Hey dibl, good idea about an ASUS drive. Hadn't thought of that; although I use their motherboards and buy their laptops.

[oshunluvr]

BTW, Qqmike: On my system, lsblk shows the drive is present, but it does not appear in inxi at all.

IMO, the easiest way to get drive info is dmesg:

dmesg | egrep -i --color 'cdrom|dvd|cd/rw|writer'

My results:

[FONT=monospace][COLOR=#000000][    1.304440] ata3.00: ATAPI: HL-DT-ST BD[/COLOR][COLOR=#FF5454][B]DVD[/B][/COLOR][COLOR=#000000]RW CH12LS28, 1.02, max UDMA/133[/COLOR]
[    1.328270] scsi 2:0:0:0: CD-ROM            HL-DT-ST BD[COLOR=#FF5454][B]DVD[/B][/COLOR][COLOR=#000000]RW CH12LS28 1.02 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5[/COLOR]
[    1.368610] sr 2:0:0:0: [sr0] scsi3-mmc drive: 40x/40x [COLOR=#FF5454][B]writer[/B][/COLOR][COLOR=#FF5454][B]dvd[/B][/COLOR][COLOR=#000000]-ram [/COLOR][COLOR=#FF5454][B]cd/rw[/B][/COLOR][COLOR=#000000] xa/form2 cdda tray[/COLOR]
[    1.369164] [COLOR=#FF5454][B]cdrom[/B][/COLOR][COLOR=#000000]: Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20[/COLOR]
[/FONT]

EDIT: Correction, the drive does not show in inxi -F it does show in inxi -d so inxi -Fd is more complete and show the dvd.

[dibl]

However, assuming the drive is bad just due to age has no logical basis.

This is correct. I'm sitting not far from the desktop system I built in 2006, and that optical drive still works great. But it has not been used hard.

The most likely cause of the trouble in this case, IMHO, is the media. Many have fallen into the "R/W erasable media is cheapest in the longer term" trap, wrt the ISO failures to boot. Yes, I would think CD or DVD +R would be most likely to work, but I've also found -Rs working on the same drive as +Rs. Not sure about your old Dell. And when you burn the ISO, if K3b will allow it, use DAO mode and change the speed from "Auto" to the slowest speed it will allow.

[Qqmike]

Now, all of a sudden, MINE doesn't work! The DVD unit is dead, won't even play a John Denver CD; or accept a Kubuntu live DVD.

I'm using 14.04, on a 1-yr-old machine with 1-yr-old Samsung DVD/CD writer.

So, I tried the cables:
Turn off the machine and the power supply (the PS) (to be safe).
There is a power plug going from the PS to the DVD writer: Pull both ends of it and re-plug.
There is a SATA connector going from the motherboard to the DVD writer: Pull both ends of it and re-plug.
For me, that didn't help.
I tried to plug the SATA connector into an unused SATA port on the motherboard. That didn't help.

I started to order dibl's DVD writer from Newegg when I remembered I had an old PC (2009) as a spare, and it had an old (2009) generic (white box) DVD writer in it.
I switched out that old DVD Writer into my newer PC.

And ...

It worked!

I was beginning to wonder why my DVD Writer wasn't showing up in all these commands we are messing with here.

Now, the DVD Writer shows up in the following (and this confirms Oshunluver's commands):

Dolphin, under Drives (left side panel).
EDIT: It shows up in Dolphin only when I have a disc loaded in the DVD/CD Writer.
As dibl noted, in a post below.

lsblk

inxi -d

inxi -Fd

dmesg | egrep -i --color 'cdrom|dvd|cd/rw|writer' (this is Oshunluvr's command, not mine--too complicated!)

cat /proc/sys/dev/cdrom/info

lshw (list hardware), it shows up as:

*-scsi:0
    physical id: 1
    logical name: scsi0
    capabilities: emulated
  *-cdrom
       description: DVD-RAM writer
       product: CDDVDW SH-S223F
       vendor: TSSTcorp
       physical id: 0.0.0
       bus info: scsi@0:0.0.0
       logical name: /dev/cdrom
       logical name: /dev/sr0
       version: SB03
       capabilities: removable audio cd-r cd-rw dvd dvd-r dvd-ram
       configuration: ansiversion=5 status=nodisc

List SATA devices (scsi): lsscsi
(You have to install this: sudo apt-get install lsscsi); Then get:

[0:0:0:0]    cd/dvd  TSSTcorp CDDVDW SH-S223F  SB03  /dev/sr0 
[1:0:0:0]    disk    ATA      WDC WD5003AZEX-0 01.0  /dev/sda

It does NOT show up using inxi -Fxxx.

Summary:

In my case, although the power (to the DVD Writer) seemed to be OK, the SATA internals (in the DVD Writer) apparently were not working to communicate with the motherboard.
My newer, 1-yr-old Samsung failed; but my much older (7 or 8 yr), generic white-box DVD Writer worked fine.

(EDIT: The damned smiley's -- having trouble again getting them to display ...)

[Qqmike]

btw, I should mention that while posting in the thread, I was not aware that my DVD Writer was not working. Just a few weeks ago, it was working perfectly for everything--ripping, burning, and running live Linux CDs/DVDs.

[dibl]

Mine only shows up in Dolphin when I've got a disc in it.

don@Hibiscus:~$ dmesg | egrep -i --color 'cdrom|dvd|cd/rw|writer'
[    2.687580] sr 1:0:0:0: [sr0] scsi3-mmc drive: 48x/48x writer dvd-ram cd/rw xa/form2 cdda tray
[    2.687581] cdrom: Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20
don@Hibiscus:~$ cat /proc/sys/dev/cdrom/info
CD-ROM information, Id: cdrom.c 3.20 2003/12/17

drive name:             sr0
drive speed:            48
drive # of slots:       1
Can close tray:         1
Can open tray:          1
Can lock tray:          1
Can change speed:       1
Can select disk:        0
Can read multisession:  1
Can read MCN:           1
Reports media changed:  1
Can play audio:         1
Can write CD-R:         1
Can write CD-RW:        1
Can read DVD:           1
Can write DVD-R:        1
Can write DVD-RAM:      1
Can read MRW:           1
Can write MRW:          1
Can write RAM:          1

don@Hibiscus:~$ inxi -Fd | grep Optical                                                                                                                            
          Optical: /dev/sr0 model: ASUS DRW-24B1ST dev-links: cdrom,cdrw,dvd,dvdrw

[Qqmike]

Mine only shows up in Dolphin when I've got a disc in it.

Yeah, it looks like that's the way it is working for me, too, in 14.04. With no disc in it, it's a no show.

[Qqmike]

I edited my Post #25 to include two more ways to show your DVD/CD Writer:
List hardware: lshw
and
List SATA (or SCSI) devices:
lsscsi
(you have to install lsscsi: sudo apt-get install lsscsi)

[anonprivate]

My DVD drive data:

sudo lshw

*-scsi:1
physical id: 3
logical name: scsi1
capabilities: emulated
*-cdrom
description: DVD writer
product: DVD+-RW GSA-H31N
vendor: HL-DT-ST
physical id: 0.0.0
bus info: scsi@1:0.0.0
logical name: /dev/cdrom
logical name: /dev/sr0
version: B109
serial: [
capabilities: removable audio cd-r cd-rw dvd dvd-r
configuration: ansiversion=5 status=nodisc

Does this give a hint regarding the best media that I should use for making live DVD's? Capabilities dvd dvd-r. Looks like DVD-r (DVD looks ambiguous) is the media I should buy