[Debburn-devel] LG CH08LS10 not burning CDs

[Thomas Schmitt]

Hi,

> my new optical drive [1] does not burn CDs.

First check for the classic standard culprit of
any CD burn problems:

Is there hald or a similar automounter watching
the drive ?
Try whether CDs with readable filesystem data
mount automatically and/or run these shell
commands:
  ps -ef | fgrep hald-addon-storage
  ps -ef | fgrep sr0
  ps -ef | fgrep scd0

Try to load the tray with the blank CD manually
and wait a few seconds after blinking has
stopped. Only then start the burn.
(A disturbing program would hopefully be done
 after a short while.)

A further indication of disturbing drive access
by other programs would be if the drive burns
DVD+RW and DVD+R without problems. They are not
much prone to merry read attempts or a little
fiddling with the drive settings.
CD-R and DVD-R burns are more picky.

------------------------------------------------

Only if it can be surely excluded that other
programs interfere with your burn, then the
following statements apply:

SAO:
> CDB:  2A 00 FF FF FF 6A 00 00 1F 00
> status: 0x2 (CHECK CONDITION)
> Sense Bytes: 70 00 05 00 00 00 00 0A 2A 00 00 80 30 05 00 00
> Sense Key: 0x5 Illegal Request, Segment 0
> Sense Code: 0x30 Qual 0x05 (cannot write medium - incompatible format) Fru 0x0

This looks like a drive and/or media problem.
The program has sent the CUE sheet which
describes the session layout and now wants
to begin writing. The address FF FF FF 6A
is -150 decimal. Despite its suspicious sign
this is the normal start position for a SAO
burn run.


TAO:
> Track 01:    0 of  671 MB written. 
> ...
> CDB:  2A 00 00 00 01 B2 00 00 1F 00
> status: 0x2 (CHECK CONDITION)
> Sense Bytes: 70 00 05 00 00 00 00 0A 2A 30 02 80 21 02 00 00
> Sense Key: 0x5 Illegal Request, Segment 0
> Sense Code: 0x21 Qual 0x02 (invalid address for write) Fru 0x0

Writing is supposed to have started at address 0.
This time the error occurs at address 01 B2
= 434 decimal = 868 kB. Less than the buffer
size of a modern drive.
So i assume that here too the first physical
write attempt did fail.

The error code is less specific than the one
from the SAO run.


So the drive does not do with your media what
other drives do flawlessly.

If possible, i would return it to the dealer
and demand replacement.
If not, try some different media brands.
Maybe you are lucky and the tested media were
just of bad quality. (Quite unusual with CD-R.)


> Burning speed has been reduced to 24x both times

Well, LG does not state on its site how fast the
drive shall be with CD.
24x speed is still a plausible limit. It might be
that the drive is willing to write faster with
media from a different manufacturer.


Have a nice day :)

Thomas