DVD writer has stopped reading/writing CD's

[Yousuf Khan]

One of my systems has a couple of DVD writers, and one of them has
stopped functioning on CD's completely. It can't read them, it can't
write them. I've tried it under both XP 32-bit, and Linux 64-bit, and
it's the same in both cases: so it's a hardware issue. The drive
continues to operate on DVD's with no problem. The other drive is
unaffected. The one with the problem is a Lite-On SOHW-1633S. What could
be causing this odd behaviour?

 

[Mike Paff]

One of my systems has a couple of DVD writers, and one of them has
stopped functioning on CD's completely. It can't read them, it can't
write them. I've tried it under both XP 32-bit, and Linux 64-bit, and
it's the same in both cases: so it's a hardware issue. The drive
continues to operate on DVD's with no problem. The other drive is
unaffected. The one with the problem is a Lite-On SOHW-1633S. What could
be causing this odd behaviour?

Different frequencies of light are needed to read/write CDs and DVDs.
Your drive probably uses two different lasers to to produce the two
different frequencies and the one used for CDs has died.

If your drive uses only one laser, then the associated circuit
that changes the light frequency has broken.

DVD writers are fairly cheap nowadays, so it's likely not worth
the time to try and fix.

 

[Eric Gisin]

Different frequencies of light are needed to read/write CDs and DVDs.
Your drive probably uses two different lasers to to produce the two
different frequencies and the one used for CDs has died.

Nonsense. CD was IR, DVD is red. Red works fine for both.

 

[Eric Gisin]

The head cannot move the 0.5mm towards the top where CD's pits are.

 

[Yousuf Khan]

The head cannot move the 0.5mm towards the top where CD's pits are.

Are you saying CD's are offset everywhere by this 0.5mm or just at the
top? And where is the top, towards the centre of the disk or the outside?

 

[Yousuf Khan]

Different frequencies of light are needed to read/write CDs and DVDs.
Your drive probably uses two different lasers to to produce the two
different frequencies and the one used for CDs has died.

If your drive uses only one laser, then the associated circuit
that changes the light frequency has broken.

DVD writers are fairly cheap nowadays, so it's likely not worth
the time to try and fix.

To fill in some additional detail, I recall that this kind of thing
happened to me once before, and I'm not sure if it happened on this same
drive or the other one. The solution turned out to be a complete Windows
XP reinstall from scratch. Have no idea why this would help, but I
didn't have Linux running previously so I don't know if it was exactly
the same problem.

Do you think perhaps the proximity of these two drives (one is sitting
right over top of the other) might affect this? Perhaps one drive starts
to overheat due to the activity of the other?

 

[Eric Gisin]

Are you saying CD's are offset everywhere by this 0.5mm or just at the
top? And where is the top, towards the centre of the disk or the outside?

The pits on CDs are just below the top label, and DVDs are right in the middle.
Both are 1.2mm thick. Why don't you remove the drive a give it a whack?

 

[Arno Wagner]

One of my systems has a couple of DVD writers, and one of them has
stopped functioning on CD's completely. It can't read them, it can't
write them. I've tried it under both XP 32-bit, and Linux 64-bit, and
it's the same in both cases: so it's a hardware issue. The drive
continues to operate on DVD's with no problem. The other drive is
unaffected. The one with the problem is a Lite-On SOHW-1633S. What could
be causing this odd behaviour?

CD and DVD use separate systems, possibly even separate lenses.
You can try a CD drive cleaner disk. If that does mot work, best
to replace the drive.

Arno

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

Yousuf Khan wrote in news:[email protected]

One of my systems has a couple of DVD writers, and one of them has
stopped functioning on CD's completely. It can't read them, it can't
write them. I've tried it under both XP 32-bit, and Linux 64-bit, and
it's the same in both cases: so it's a hardware issue. The drive
continues to operate on DVD's with no problem. The other drive is
unaffected. The one with the problem is a Lite-On SOHW-1633S.

I have the same drive.
On mine though the DVD R/W capability has gone and CD is fine.

I also have a Samsung Combo that reads only DVDs

What could be causing this odd behaviour?

Yep, that I wouldn't mind knowing too. Sofar, I'm with Paff.

 

[Franc Zabkar]

One of my systems has a couple of DVD writers, and one of them has
stopped functioning on CD's completely. It can't read them, it can't
write them. I've tried it under both XP 32-bit, and Linux 64-bit, and
it's the same in both cases: so it's a hardware issue. The drive
continues to operate on DVD's with no problem. The other drive is
unaffected. The one with the problem is a Lite-On SOHW-1633S. What could
be causing this odd behaviour?

All you needed to do to confirm whether the drive could read CDs was
to load an audio CD and listen for music at the headphone socket.

- Franc Zabkar

 

[Franc Zabkar]

Nonsense. CD was IR, DVD is red. Red works fine for both.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/20030147331.html

"... a DVD optical pickup using 650 nm laser can read both the CD disc
and the DVD disc. However, for historical reasons, the CD-Recordable
(CD-R) discs contain a dye, which can only be detected by 780 nm
lasers. As a result, most DVD optical pickups today contain two
lasers: one with 780 nm wavelength for reading the CD discs including
the CD-R and CD-RW discs and one with 650 nm wavelength for reading
DVD discs."

- Franc Zabkar