DVD Drive is RAW????

[reddevilggg]

I Have a HP DVD-RW Lightscribe drive, but it has stopped recognizing blank discs. The File system is RAW and reads blank DVD's as full, no space on disk.

Any help???

P.S. I know i posted this a while ago and said i'd found a solution but i was mistaken. 

[Broni]

I'd say, you need a new drive.

[truenorth]

reddevilggg, While Broni may well be right if you have access to another compatible computer/dvd computer you can eliminate the possibility that it might not be dead by temporarily installing it there and trying it to see the result.truenorth

[Broni]

Good idea

[reddevilggg]

After a lot of research I am coming to the conclusion that this problem has happened alot and no-body has got a perfect theory on how to correct this. (this could be taken as a challenge, by the way).

But what I am understanding so far is that the drivers for the DVD Writer are corrupt. I can not find a driver download (yes, I've checked the HP site) for the 1040i and if the drive does not read disks, how can i perform a recovery?

problems, problems?? 

There are a few more time-consuming things i can try. I have got access to another computer and I can also back things up to an old hard drive (not really old) so I can not lose data, but this is my primary PC and i love and its not working arrgh. 

[BC_Programmer]

So... I take it you've tried the drive in another PC?

[patio]

Optical drives haven't needed drivers since WimME so you're barking up the wrong tree...

Test the drive in another working machine as BC said.

[truenorth]

Patio, What! i don't count? truenorth

[patio]

 

[reddevilggg]

ok, will do and I'll be back with results, my second dvd-rom/cd-rw is now the same. Both do not work, one is HP and other is Sony, both did work up untill about 2 weeks ago???

[truenorth]

beginning to sound more like a computer or software issue than the hardware optical drives.truenorth

[reddevilggg]

Well, I decieded to do a clean recovery, re-install and now the drives work fine. They still read as 'RAW' file format and the disk's still show up as used when they are blank, but hey, it works??

[truenorth]

So if i understand correctly even though the discs are being described incorrectly you can still use them to read and write? If so then of course some glitch still remains and it may only be a matter of time until the problem or some other issue may arise. However as i mentioned earlier the problem generating what was happening and what is now happening would appear to be software related or something associated with settings somewhere on your computer. Have you tried using a different DVD burning software to see what happens? However i guess the good news is you don't have to rush out and buy replacement optical drives.truenorth
P.S. I may be wrong but i get the feeling you did not try either drive in another computer. Had you done so it would have isolated the problem to the current one if they had worked without issues in the other.

[reddevilggg]

What i did try is, I put the blank discs in another computer (which i have had for a couple of years, it has not been connected to the internet). The disk format (in the optical drive properties) was still RAW. Although i did not try the original optical drive in this machine, this still confused me. How could it be a software problem if this happened to a machine that hasn't even been switched on in 2 years???

I have scoured the internet and only found people how have had the same problem, but have not found a solution.

I should of really tryed the drive in my other machine but time is not on my side at the moment and this would take a while! Maybe i will sonn, just to get to the bottom of this. Even though the drive works, it is still bugging me as to why this is happening.