Sony Dru500a Stops Working

[caprioles9000]

Ok for those of you who have a sony dru500a this might be interesting...i do hope none of you have the same problems i have had but the rumour that sony dru500a drives stops burning at all without any particular reason is true.....Yep this is true ...I got my sony last year ..i was one of the many first in holland to get it.....they ony sold about 100.000 pieces last year...and started to deliver them again now around the end of january.........The first time i had it things went great......i did have media problems but heck who didn't ..so the first firmware came ..and i upgraded it to 1.0d....it worked fine.....however all of a sudden for no reason the drive just stopped burning.....i tried all kinds of software ..from nero to vob...to recordnow to even its max version..nothing worked...so i had to call them up and they told me that i had to send it to belgium because they dont repair them here in holland....this just happend right before xmass....so i send it to belgium to get it fix...at that time they did not have enough parts and extras to fix it....so i had to wait two months to get it back ...and at around the third week of january i got my drive back ..so i decided to try it out ..and things worked fine ...however i had problems from burning files from an NTFS file system :(......so then came firmware 1.0g ..and guess what ...it solved the problem of being not able to burn from the NTFS hdd.....so i was very happy....since i upgraded to 1.0g things went great ...i must have burned 10 or 15 dvd's .....until yesterday night......it just did the same thing........It just stopped burning again....again i get the same errors from recornow max.....so i decided to use other software to see whether it was recordnow max..but no all the other software failed again ...just like the first time ...so i decided to format my drive ..and only install xp, the vga drivers and only recordnow max.....guess what again no luck :(.....I downloaded this software created by sony to check drives from the sony.storagesupport.com. So the software checks my drive to see if its fine or not..and it failed......this is the second time ..it has just stopped on its own :angry: ...i just spoke with the guys from sony....and i am sending the rma.zip file that i got from the drive check software of theirs....they will be analyzing this and then checking to see what the problem is...!!!:angry: ....besides all of this it is a damn good burner.....well just tought i should share this with you guys ...this does not mean that people should get scared and not buy this burner ..i think it is the best dvd burner in the market today ..however ..it does piss me off :(

[padre]

Man, did you break your ENTER key? I started to read your post, but it's real difficult because it doesn't take a break!

Sorry to hear the difficulty with your Sony. I hope they do right by you and fix it. I'm getting ready to upgrade from my Pioneer A03, and probably will look at the Sony - despite the misc. issues I've seen on this board, it still looks like a good drive.

[caprioles9000]

ww00tt ehehe ..yeah ...i just could stop wrtiting :)...forgot about the enter key!!!...I would definetly go for the sony...it really is a great burner!!!

[LakersFan]

Mine's turned to crap, too... :mad:

What ended up happening? Did it get fixed?

[Caedel]

How many discs have you all burned? I have burnt about 50 with mine since I got it in October. It was the first one available at Best Buy in my area. When I got it, it wasnt even on the shelf yet.

[LakersFan]

Hi there,
I got mine last December and have burnt many disks with it. The thing is, I upgraded my firmware to 2.0f, got some new DVDs (BeAll brand) and tried the new DVD Decryptor all around the same time... Then I started to have a trouble... A few bad disks here, a few bad there. Now lately 4 out of 5 disks won't burn. I switched the software to Alcohol 120%. It worked the first time. Cool! I tried it again. I simulated first, it worked. I actually burned, it failed. So it's not the software. I just ordered some new disks (Verbatim DataLifePlus). Hopefully that's my problem.

Will let you know..
-LF

[Toona]

just to let you know Verbatim has admitted to using other manufacturers for thier media lately al I have been able to get my hands on are CMC made Verbatims not the original MCC. MCC's worked great these new CMC's are crap just a heads up try TDK's or Riteks if you can find them

[Caedel]

From what i have read many are having probs with 2.0f firmware... i am still on 2.0e i believe... possibly this is a reason for my lack of problems?

[boden11]

my dru-500a is still fine (knock on wood). picked it up from bb back in Nov 02 and have burned like

25 or so appple 2x -r
50 lead datas (accu 2x)
25 ritek g03s
20 taiyo yudens
5 pack of memorex dvd+r
5 pack of maxell +r

and i've done about 10 out of my current pack of 25 tdk 2x -r. (haven't even bothered with 4x cuz of the price and the problems everyone else seems to have). also done about mebbe 10 or so cd-rs. shrug. if it ever stopped working id just buy another one from bb and return my old unit

:)

Originally posted by Caedel
How many discs have you all burned? I have burnt about 50 with mine since I got it in October. It was the first one available at Best Buy in my area. When I got it, it wasnt even on the shelf yet.

[LakersFan]

Originally posted by Toona
just to let you know Verbatim has admitted to using other manufacturers for thier media lately al I have been able to get my hands on are CMC made Verbatims not the original MCC. MCC's worked great these new CMC's are crap just a heads up try TDK's or Riteks if you can find them

Already ordered them... hopefully I'll get the MCC's!

If they suck, I'll return 'em.:sly:
Thanks,
-LF

[lrosado]

BestBuy is selling the MCC's DVD-R's just to let you know.

[int 21h]

This rumor is quite true. My first 500a stopped working very abruptly one day. (See http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=46537)

Fortunately I was able to return it and get another, my new one seems to still be working fine (hopefully it holds up until a 12x replacement is here :) )