How bad is "POWER CALIBRATION AREA ERROR" ?

[banjo67xxx]

Happy new year everyone,

I keep getting Sense Key 0x03 (Medium Error) ASC 0x73 ASCQ 0x03 (POWER CALIBRATION AREA ERROR) from my DVD burner whenever I try to burn a DVD-R.

Is this the end of the road for the DVD burner (it still reads) or is there something I can do to repair it? e.g. Can DVD burners be cleaned, and how?

TIA

[Serrik]

Most common cause of that is it doesn't like your media.  Try a different brand of media.

Sometimes its power, so you can try arranging it so your power cables so your DVD drive is on a cable all its own and not sharing power with other devices.  This could possibly help.

And you can try updating the firmware on your DVD drive.  The software to do this should be on the software CD you got with your drive, or at the manufacturer website.

[banjo67xxx]

It works with different media, but I've already burned over 60 DVDs on the same media that didn't work  :-?

How come I burnt 15 DVDs from one batch, and I can't burn on atleast 10 of the remaining 35

Its consistent too. Ever since last week its not burnt any more DVDs from that batch !!!

[Serrik]

This is the best explanation for the problem I have read.

I would suggest trying each of the solutions in this quote and if none of them work you may have a faulty burner.

I get a 'Power calibration error' or 'Calibration area (almost) full' error message. Why?

Power Calibration is controlled by the recorder.

Before any write operation, all recorders must do a 15 step power test to determine the optimum power for writing to the CD; this is called "Optimum Power Calibration"(OPC). During the write, it continues to do this test to get the best write throughout the whole CD; this is called "Running Optimum Power Calibration" (ROPC).

This whole process is controlled by the recorder, though initiated by programs such as Nero. There is an area on the inner part of the CD for the test and test data info to be stored. You can use this area up to 999 times.

If you receive the "Power calibration error" or "Power calibration area is (almost) full" error message, the cause will be either poor media, poor power, or a defective recorder.

Please try the following solutions:

1. Update the firmware of your recorder. Please check the manufacturer's website for the latest version.

2. Try another brand of media.

3. Try different power connectors, and for recorders, do not share power with other devices. It needs its own power connector. If the error occurs with an external recorder, the power source in the chassis could be the cause. As a test, try to take the recorder out of the external chassis and connect it internal.

4. Try different configurations, such as taking the CD-ROM to the primary IDE bus as slave and have only the recorder connected to the secondary IDE bus as master.

5. Send the recorder in for service.