TS-L632D on W7J not burning anymore

Asus W7J on WinXP, burner is TSST TS-L632D.


Original firmware: AS05

Can still read discs but recently when writing discs, my burner could not buffer correctly. No matter what speed or what disc media I used, it could not burn anything. The speed will be really slow (0.7x) because it could not buffer. No matter if I used Nero, ImgBurn, or anything, nothing would burn. It would say it was successfully completed, but the disc would remain empty.

I tried the the "PIO to DMA" trick, and the no-buffer problem was fixed. The speed was back to normal, so I thought the disc would burn now. But still says disc completed successfully, but the disc remains empty.

I decided to try updating from AS05 to AS99, downloaded from http://backfire.rpc1.org/tsstcorp/index.php?path=TS-L632D Firmware upgraded successfully.

Strange thing I noticed is if I canceled the burning before it was completed, the disc is PARTIALLY burnt. But not when I let it go to 100%, the disc remains empty.


Burner sounds fine and light blinks when burning and "completed successfully", but the disc remain empty. Please help, this is frustrating. And ASUS is no help, they don't even provide firmware for it. Thanks.

 

I suspect that the burner is dying. If it had gone into PIO mode then that is probably caused by errors associated with poor burning.

The best course of action will be to replace the burner. Is it still in the 1 year warranty? If so, if Asus won't help then you can try the Samsung optical drive support people.

Otherwise you need a "slim" optical drive. It does not need to be another TS-L632D.

John

 

I don't know if it was in PIO mode, but PIO to DMA did fix the buffer problem.

But does canceling a partial burn still write data onto the disc?


The warranty is over. Does ASUS offer any service post-warranty? If not, would it be cheaper just to buy a new slim optical drive?

The thing is I have not used the drive for reading or writing much. I have this laptop for 1.5 years only.

 

Just a thought: Where are you? Doesn't Asus give a 2 year warranty?

You could check if the lens on the optical drive is dirty.

John

 

this is a known problem with this drive TSST TS-L632D. and his precedessor
TSST TS-532A.

Typically it burns some DVD/CD and then having the problem with blank disks.

It´s dead-sorry!

 

I bought it with a 1-year warranty. So I guess I'm out of luck.

Yea, I cleans the lens. Nothing to lose.

Yea, I'm guessing it's dying and dead. Saw that there have been lots of problems with the L632D. Was hoping it would a software problem.

So what's a good inexpensive replacement drive? I don't need anything special, just occasional burning. Probably best to get dual layer writer too.

 

If you are in USA then start at Newegg.

If in UK then there's Komplett, play.com, Overclockers and more. I would be tempted by the Liteon. They tend to be well-behaved and a side benefit is that they are relatively cooperative over region-free DVD watching.

John

 

Weird thing. I noticed some dust on the lens and the disc drive, so I wiped it off. Now it burns fine. My writer works again! I still think it is dying because it's inconsistent but it ain't dead yet!