[MacDV] DVD burner problem

[Richard Brown]

I just had to replace my CD/DVD (Superdrive) burner. The Pioneer 103 
had died,
and was replaced with a Pioneer 107. Under 10.3.3, the Pioneer 107 was
recognized just fine and I have since burned both CD's and DVD video, 
but now
at 4X speed on DVD, a welcome improvement.

FWIW:

Everyone should keep in mind burning FASTER is not necessarily BETTER,
especially if you are ARCHIVING. This particularly applies to CD's, 
which,
while you can burn at 24-48x, such discs will likely have a much shorter
lifespan in terms of readable data. Essentially, the faster you go, the
shallower the data pits, and thus there's a greater risk of data loss
under the same storage and other circumstances as compared to a
slow, but more archival 2x burn. I've read white papers from the audio
industry stating 2x was the acceptable LIMIT for CDR burning speed.

We have heard of people complaining about the short lifespan of CDR 
media,
but at the same time, we have discs dating back to the time 2x was the 
fastest
burner of all. High side of a decade or so with no data loss on any of
thousands of archives.

THE FIREWIRE ISSUE:

When you speak of firewire drives acting up, my guess is you find them
spinning down unexpectedly, and the next system call to the drive 
results
in the "spinning pizza of death?"

If external firewire drives do this to you, you can usually power them 
down
and back up without destroying data (as long as the computer is 
"hanging")
and this may cure the problem.

However, there was a famous glitch in some of the 10.2.x flavors which
involved a timed, hardware shutdown command of external firewire drives,
which was the kiss of death, nearly every time, as the command ignored
your "DO NOT SLEEP" settings, and sometimes created a truly "wake proof"
state. Again, the spinning pizza of death.

The workaround is found in UNIX, where you bring up the Unix Terminal,
Log in, and issue the following command (and pressing "Return:")

sudo pmset -a spindown 0

This is a countering, system level command which tells external firewire
drives to NOT shut down BEFORE MacOS X can screw things up.

Nuff said,

Richard Brown
www.go2rba.com




On Apr 27, 2004, at 7:31 AM, ZEN99 at aol.com wrote:

> My G-4 burner - recently replaced, isn't recongized this morning by my
> computer.  I put media (dvd or cd) into it and it doesn't see it.  The 
> firewire
> drives have also been 'acting up.  Any suggestions.  (Right now 
> repairing
> permissions.)  (dual g-4, osx 10.2.8.)
> John
> zen99 at aol.com
>
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