Any known reliability issues with MATSHITA DVD-RAM UJ-822S?

[alpuzz]

Hi,

Just wondering whether there are any known issues with the MATSHITA DVD-RAM UJ-822S in terms of reliably burning CDR media? I've used several spindles of admittedly bottom of the barrel disks; but, I buy them because they burn fine on all my other drives; However, the MATSHITA DVD-RAM UJ-822S only seems to work with 1 out of every 3 or 4. I'm burning using Nero, and I'll typically see calibration errors or idle failures.

I've had the drive replaced once already, and that actually seemed to help a bit; but lately, I'm back to seeing the problem again.
I know I could probably buy better media and thereby resolve the issue; but it just seems like these drives are ridiculously sensitive. I can use the disks I have on all my older beater desktops, but not on my laptop that I paid $2000 for a little over a year ago? Doesn't seem right to me.

Is there any chance of getting IBM to swap this drive for another brand with equivalent functionality?

TIA,

[christopher_wolf]

Did you try burning a few with the RecordNow! application that comes by default?

I have had no problems with mine, although some have reported intermittent I/O errors that get worse. If it gets bad enough, however, you should call IBM/Lenovo about it.

[alpuzz]

Hi,

Unfortunately, I don't have RecordNow! any more, as I've done a reinstall of the system with a minimum of factory supplied stuff. The current batch of disks I'm using are Memorex, which I thought are supposed to be pretty decent. Right now, I'm attempting to burn a Ubuntu Edgy Live CD at 8x, and it seems to be working; However, if I were to raise the speed, I would almost certainly get errors. Since this is already the second of these drives I've had,, I'm wondering whether I'm just lucky, or part of a known trend?

[dr_st]

I'm wondering whether I'm just lucky, or part of a known trend?

A little bit of both actually. Matshita drives are known to be (on average) bad, slow, picky and glitchy, more so than other drives. Unfortunately, they are the only ones who are manufactured to be so slim, so Lenovo uses them exclusively for the T-series, the X-series Ultrabase, and the Z6xt series. However, my Matshita drive, while being annoying, refusing to read some disks and producing write failures here and there still does not produce such a high percentage of coasters as yours seems to. And I use Nero exclusively.