Burn Notice
June 29th, 2009No More Coasters
My most exciting achievement today was installing a new DVD burner. My old one just refused to work. Changing media made no difference. Wouldn’t burn DVDs or CDs. I was tired of throwing out one disk after another, while I tried different things. So now the new one is burning a copy of a milling DVD.
The old machine was IDE, and this one is SATA. Seems much faster. The other one stopped and started, and it seemed to take a while for the PC and the burner to shake hands and get acquainted before burning a disk. And it looks like the burning itself was slower. The new disk just popped out, and the elapsed time was only 4:39.
I’m wondering if bird dust killed the old drive. Marv and Maynard emit dust 24/7. It’s like talc, only it seems finer. Goes everywhere. I don’t think it would do the optics in a burner much good.
The new one was cheap. About $36, delivered. OEM job. I stuck it in there and turned it on, and that was that.
I guess it’s sad when something this trivial makes you feel so good, but that old burner made me crazy, and I had to keep my laptop on the dining table to burn DVDs.
I don’t need a great burner, because I don’t steal movies or music. I record things so I can watch them once and then discard them. I suppose it’s infringement, but it’s a pretty lame type of infringement.
I’m mad with power. I think I’ll burn another one.
June 29th, 2009 at 3:26 PM
Bird dust is nasty pervasive, and electronics are susceptable to problems from dust in general.
June 30th, 2009 at 12:02 AM
If you want a cheap way to get that crud out of the air, point a fan at a bucket of water. Put a little bleach in the bucket to kill germs, but not so much that it smells like a public swimming pool.
June 30th, 2009 at 10:19 AM
My friend has a modest little company that sells air filter units targeted to the bird (and reptile) fancier community. They are very nice, durable, effective units. I’ve had a few running for about 15 years now (they are also helpful for people with allergy/resperatory issues like my wife has). He has ads in all the bird magazines – JWR Environmental. The units feature a nice multistage filter set up and a UV light to kill germs/viruses. I highly recommend them.
June 30th, 2009 at 4:44 PM
Sometimes the drive just doesn’t like writing at default (ie maximum) speed. I had a burner that would coaster disks regularly until I started setting the burn speed one notch below maximum.
June 30th, 2009 at 5:40 PM
You do not want a list of everything I tried.
July 1st, 2009 at 11:11 AM
I’m sure you’re right, but since I didn’t remember reading you say you’d tried that, I figured I’d mention it.
I happened to be at Wal-mart last night, and wandered through the electronics section. They had an internal Lite-On 12X for $42.