CD - DVD - BluRay burning programs freeze intermittantly

Rich A

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Apr 5, 2013
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When trying to write to DVD or BD often the hard drive light will come on steady (with NO actual HD activity) and the DVD activity light on the drive will blink slowly.

But that process? is hung up. It goes on forever. I can not open the DVD door, can't kill the burning program, or any related related processes in task manager. Other programs at that time CAN be opened, run without a problem. But the DVD writer program window is stuck in limbo. The only way to get rid of the "stuck" process is to reboot the computer after which everything works normal again.

This happens intermittently and about 50 percent of the time. (I've been living with it for about three months now while trying to find the problem)

Tried three different burners (Plextor, Samsung, and Lite-On) All new.
Tried several CD-DVD-BD burning programs.

Happens with simple CD DVD or Blu-Ray copying .. as well as with various ripping software.

After I force a shut down and open the DVD drive the unwritten disc is still empty and was never written to.

Windows 7 Pro 64-bit. 8 GB Ram ASUS M3N78-VM Main board
C: OCZ SSD
D: SATA program and scratch disk 500 GB
E: 500 GB archive / temp disk
Currently using Liteon iHBS212-08
Tried Plextor PX-LB950SA and others

No malware, viruses etc. System passes all diagnostics etc.

Note: It will hang up even when trying to do a simple CD copy. Also happens with Verbatim discs (CD DVD BD25) as well as many other brands.

I've never had a problem with any of the DVD burners I've had .. just the Blu-ray burners. I've even pulled the BD burner and re-installed a old LG DVD only burner and it works fine.

I'm puzzled .. and out of ideas.

- Rich A


 
What SATA port are you connecting your optical drives to?
Some optical drives are finicky and will only work in IDE mode.

Ports SATA4 & SATA5 on your motherboard do not support IDE mode, only AHCI mode & RAID mode.

Connect your BD drive to port SATA1 or SATA2 or SATA3.
Boot into BIOS and change the "Type" setting of the port from "Auto" to "CDROM".
See page 2-16 of your motherboard manual if you need additional info.

See if that helps.

Also, FYI your OCZ SSD should be connected to port SATA4 or SATA5 in AHCI mode for best performance.
 

Rich A

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Apr 5, 2013
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I've always had some problems with one or two of the SATA ports. The big Data drive ( E) is running off a add-on two port SATA controller. That external 2-device drive bay is used to hot swap the big data drive and clone drives for back up etc.

Curiously, today when I turned the computer on, the D: drive was not found. I removed it and checked it and it is fine. It seems that the SATA port that the D: drive was plugged into, has failed. I guess the intermittent problems I've been having lately was a portent of things to come. I think my main board SATA controller has been intermittent and one of the SATA ports has finally died. Guess it's time for a new mother board. I'll post more here when I figure out what's going on. For the record, I'm pretty sure the thing is set up as you had mentioned with the SSD in port 4 in AHCI mode.

I have a new ASUS Saberthooth 990 FX main board I was planning to use to upgrade this system in the near future. I guess the future is now. <grin> Thanks for the help.