Thinkpads Forum

I have a W500 with Vista 64 Business. It's a clean install on a new hard drive.

I recently have been struggling trying to my system to burn to dual layer DVDs. The problem is, the Panasonic Matashita UJ 232A Blu Ray recordable drive doesn't even RECOGNIZE blank dual layer DVDs, let alone write to them.

I checked with Nero InfoTool and, sure enough, it tells me that the drive is incapable of writing to DVD+-R DL. This doesn't seem right to me, since the drive can do pretty much everything else, including writing dual layer Blu Ray discs. Also, as far as I can tell, other vendors (on eBay) say the drive can write DL DVDs. Plus, I think that is a pretty standard capability nowadays.

I thought it might be due to my fresh install, so I put the original hard drive back in to see if that was the case. I booted up on the factory drive, which is almost completely untouched, and even there I can't do anything with my blank DVD-R DL discs.

These are Memorex discs, which I hear aren't the best, but to me it seems clear that my machine, even from the factory, thinks this drive can't write to DVD-R DLs.

Can someone with the drive check this out for me? If you have Nero InfoTool, you can just run that and it tells you the drive's abilities.

I have a feeling I may need to send it back on warranty to get a new drive.

Welcome to thinkpads.com!

Dell's support site says that the UJ232A does not write dual layer DVD-R or DVD+R.

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/s ... n/spec.htm

edit: And this from Lenovo.com

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-70234

appears to say that DVD+R DL and DVD-R DL is supported only on reads, not writes:

Reads or writes data with speedy maximum data transfer rates of:

* 16x maximum (writing to CD-R media)
* 10x maximum (writing to CD-RW media)
* 5x maximum (writing to DVD-RAM media)
* 8x maximum (writing to DVD+/-R media) <-- DL not listed
* 4x maximum (writing to DVD+/-RW media) <-- DL not listed
* 2x maximum (writing to BD-R/RE SL media)
* 1x maximum (writing to BD-R/RE DL media)
* 24x maximum (reading CD-ROM, CD-R media)
* 24x maximum (reading CD-RW media)
* 8x maximum (reading DVD-ROM/-R/+R SL media)
* 6x maximum (reading DVD-ROM/-R/+R DL media) <-- DL is listed
* 6x maximum (reading DVD-RW/+RW media)
* 5x maximum (reading DVD-RAM media)
* 2x maximum (reading BD-ROM media)
* 2x maximum (reading BD-R/RE SL/DL media)

Amazing...I Googled the heck out of the model number and found almost nothing about it, I posted the question on Lenovo's forums and NoteBookReview with almost no response..and here, within an hour, I have an answer already!

I guess it's comforting that it's not my unit that's defective, but on the other hand I wish it could write DL DVDs. Oh well.

We aim to please (and help) .

I'm also on the Lenovo forum, but don't check into the W forum all that much.

edit: Found your post on the Lenovo forum and posted the answer there as well.