DVD-Rs suck

[William Wallet]

Ok,
so I've got this shiny new Intel iMac. And Cid's grubby 2002 iMac is on the table next to it.

Now, DVDs that I burned on the old iMac ... some of them work on the new computer, some of them do not. In both cases they are from the same batch of discs, and all discs work on Cid's Mac.

Now Cid's Mac is having a hard drive problem and I can't turn it on, so there's DVDs I can't really access.

How can I force my new Mac to read these damn things? I KNOW that the discs are fine, they worked fine on the other computer.

[GodzFire]

Macs don't have problems, therefore it must be user error.

[Melekor]

I've seen this before across different PCs as well. I think some older DVD readers have weaker error correction capabilities, so if there are some scratches, one drive may be able to handle them while the other can't. You might be able to get a firmware update for your dvd drive with updated error correction capability.

Then again since it's actually the newer comp having trouble reading the discs, I don't know how much sense it makes in this case.

[Myrd]

Your DVD drive in the Intel iMac may be failing. The first symptom is it starting to refuse to read burned discs. Test other burned DVDs on it - and see if they have problems also. If so and if you still have warranty on it, you should call Apple.

[Graydon]

Yea do some random tests with all sorts of discs, both 'legit' store bought disks... Movies, Music, Games etc, both on DVD and CD if you can, and also a selection of burned DVD and CDs. My rom drive failed on me on my MBP within a year, as did Myrd's. I think apple bought a super shoddy batch at some point along the line there.

[vinylrake]

you could also try booting up the failing older Mac with a system CD/DVD (press 'C' when turn on the power button) then you could use the older system to read the DVR's and network the two computers - if you have a hub it's simple, just share the DVR drive on the older computer and the newer comp should be able to read it. (at least that should work in theory) or share a folder on the newer comp and use the older comp to copy the files from the DVR to the shared folder on the new mac.

Or buy a 4-8GB Flash Drive and transfer the files from DVR to FlashDrive to new comp HD.

[Killswitch]

Use Target Disk mode on the old Mac. Startup and hold the T key. It should boot with a Firewire symbol dancing around the screen. Attached the Macs together with a 6-pin to 6-pin Firewire cable.

Now the old Mac's HD should show up as a disk on the new Mac. Also any DVDs you insert in the old Mac should appear on the new Mac's desktop.

(Key word is 'should' - I haven't used Target mode in a while)

[William Wallet]

Yeah, will go with that last idea just to start with. I've never tried accessing a DVD through the Firewire connection before but it's worth a shot.

I'd dislike the idea of the drive in my new iMac being shot already - hell I've only had it since April. Still, far stranger things have happened!

[Deqlyn]

Try cleaning the coffee out of the drink holder and then try the disk. That always seems to be the problem with me reading DVD-Rs. But I'm a PC and I have a virus.

[vinylrake]

never even heard of target mode. sounds nifty. if i didn't need a 6-pin(FW400)-to-8-pin(FW800) cable I'd use that method to get stuff off my old comp.

[William Wallet]

Actually before I could even use half of my firewire devices I had to chase up new cables/adaptors... I'd been using FIrewire 400 for so long I'd no idea that Firewire 800 had been invented. Very annoying. What's next, USB 4.0?

Target mode has been a mainstay of my stuff-shifting, I must say ... incredibly handy, even when all the Macs in my room were in fine working order.

[Zeph]

Macs don't have problems, therefore it must be user error.

lol@that

Macs break as much as any other company

We've had numerous hardware failure with our macs, the latest being a dead GPU on our brand new imac with 8800GS. It died 8 months after we got it!

[Zeph]

Your DVD drive in the Intel iMac may be failing. The first symptom is it starting to refuse to read burned discs. Test other burned DVDs on it - and see if they have problems also. If so and if you still have warranty on it, you should call Apple.

CD reader in the car started with the same problem, couldn't read burned discs but could read legit ones. Now it can't read any of them.

[vinylrake]

One of your DV-Rs must have a magnetic virus, which infected your comps DVRdrive, and that in turn infected all the CDs/DVDs you put into your comp. Now one of them has infected your Car CD player. Basically you are screwed.










It sounds plausible tho, doesn't it?

[haravikk]

The DVD drives Apple ships with its computers are actually shockingly bad. I spent £4,500 on a Mac Pro only to get a DVD drive that barely worked (it couldn't exceed 0.5x read) =/