LG blue-ray writer

I think my 11-year-old LG Blu-ray writer is on its last legs, it will read blue-ray disks and write to blank Blue-ray, it will read CD disks eventually and will write to blank CD, but it doesn't like DVDs for some reason, no matter what one I use,

i have taken it apart, gave it a clean, even re-done the firmware just in case that had corrupted, not sure what else to try. But maybe someone here may have an idea before I have to splash out on a new one, I don't use it very often, which is why I thought it may need a clean, even oiled the rails the head runs on, just in case that was dry. Put a DVD in, it tries, but just keep clicking. I thought if the laser were miss aligned then surly CD would not work, Blue-rays are read by a different laser.

Anyway if anyone has any ideas, at the end of the day it has done well for 11 years, just not really want to buy another one, even if they are a quarter of the price I paid for mine now.

thanks peeps.

I'm pretty sure that CDs and DVDs also use different lasers.

I never realised that, trying to get info about it is difficult, anyway I found a video on YouTube where a DVD/CD writer was being taken apart, and the two lasers was labelled.
so i presume it is the laser or circuitry for the DVD part that have gone, which is a shame. I will order another one, not sure if to get an External one or not as it could be used for the Mac mini if I decide to get one. I am surprised they are still around, I doubt many people buy an optical drive these days, i am certainly going to go for another LG.

Thanks for the reply.

In reply to a post by TinyMongomery:

I'm pretty sure that CDs and DVDs also use different lasers.

They do:

In reference to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_disc_drive#Laser_and_optics:

Initially, CD-type lasers with a wavelength of 780 nm (within the infrared) were used. For DVDs, the wavelength was reduced to 650 nm (red color), and for Blu-ray Disc this was reduced even further to 405 nm (violet color).

Don’t think there’s much more you could tinker with yourself. Sounds like the laser has gone. PlayStations had a similar issue. For a drive its probably going to be cheaper buying a new one than attempting a repair unfortunately.

I should have realised, no idea why I did not.
I know blue-ray used a different laser, which is why it is called Blue-ray
How on earth did you find that info? I looked for ages and only found something from a YouTube video, thanks for that anyway.

i have ordered this LG one from Ebuyer, it is a newer version than mine, and it can use larger capacity Blu-ray discs than mine and support m disc, I am sure mine never did even with the updates. The one thing mine does have is light scribe, but I did not really use it, and I don't think you can get the disks now anyway.
I know it is old tech and many people don't use it any more, but I still like optical discs for storage, if the amount of data I could store on a floppy drive was higher I would still be using them as well.
I know I am strange, but it is just this physical thing, more pleasing than a USB stick, also I have a lot of stuff still on disk.

I was going to convert my Allo Allo disks onto USB or onto Blu-ray, so I did not have to use the original discs, and that is when I realised that the drive was not reading DVD discs. i thought it was a bit iffy the last time I used it.

As i said before, it is 11 years old, so it have done ok.

It is coming on Monday.

Done that, see post below yours and above this one, and thanks

but it so sad and annoying

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

How on earth did you find that info?

I just googled "cd laser", the Wiki link that it found looked promising, and there it was

One of the few times I've got lucky with search terms

Edited by billford (Thu 21-Oct-21 21:02:03)

Searching a bit further, it seems that some (all?) Blu Ray writers have a single laser for CD/DVD but it has circuitry that switches it's frequency. In either case, it seems you have a problem with the DVD side of things

I've got a nice external Samsung writer, which is useful for switching between my many computers. That's always worked well, and does rewritable Blu Rays too, but I'm not sure if Samsung make them anymore. I always liked LG internal drives.

In reply to a post by billford:

How on earth did you find that info?

I just googled "cd laser", the Wiki link that it found looked promising, and there it was

One of the few times I've got lucky with search terms


Wow, i tried three different search engines and got a load of how to use the laser for something it was not meant to be used for

thanks.

In reply to a post by TinyMongomery:

Searching a bit further, it seems that some (all?) Blu Ray writers have a single laser for CD/DVD but it has circuitry that switches it's frequency. In either case, it seems you have a problem with the DVD side of things

When I took the lid off to look and stood well back, the only laser that lit up was the blue one, but I presume the other one must otherwise it would not have read CDs, but that is not perfect, sometimes it will, and sometimes it won't.

I've got a nice external Samsung writer, which is useful for switching between my many computers. That's always worked well, and does rewritable Blu Rays too, but I'm not sure if Samsung make them anymore. I always liked LG internal drives.

I doubt many are produced these days as more and more people are using other forms of storage, i choose my LG one as it was the cheapest one at the time, but it was picky with discs, LG improved it a little with updates, but I have some blueway disks here that will only work like a floppy, UDF format, in that I can drag files to it, but I can't use software or windows to burn a load of files to them in one go. They are used once and that is it, but still useful.

This new one seems to offer more than the old on, even writing to 100GB discs, not cheap, a 5 pack of 100GB M disks is around £78

A Samsung EVO 128GB SD card from Amazon would be cheaper @ £13.79 delivered, faster and give you 28% more storage.

I've found SD cards to be an extremely unreliable source of storage. I've got more than a dozen dead ones.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

A Samsung EVO 128GB SD card from Amazon would be cheaper @ £13.79 delivered, faster and give you 28% more storage.

Maybe, but these are M-disk, so they are different to normal disks in that they will last for years. I doubt I will get M disks and if I do they will be DVDs.

It is possible to get 10x25GB BD-RE, rewritable Blueray for about £15.

I have SD cards, but I normally use them in my camera, the only one I use for long term storage is the one with Reflect on, so I can boot up the computer and restore it with an image, but then I have also able to boot into Macrium reflect direct from the SSD as it has a menu that come up, windows or reflect

I also have a stack of USB pen drives.

My main reason for getting the drive is so I can get data that is stored on DVDs

In reply to a post by TinyMongomery:

I've found SD cards to be an extremely unreliable source of storage. I've got more than a dozen dead ones.
[/quote

i have found that out, I tried to read some files from a SD card that had been left for a few years and no go.

Well it came yesterday and Herpes left it outside, I did not notice until this morning. It was not supposed to have come until Monday.
It works anyway, I can now read DVDs

It is also manufactured in March this year, which surprised me, I did not think they were produced any more.

Herpes 🤣

Reminds me of:

Patient: "Doctor, doctor, I think I am suffering from Hermes."

Doctor: "I think you mean Hepres."

Patinet: "No, I'm a carrier"

😂😂😂

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Herpes 🤣

Yep, i hate them, awful company, i have to deal with them at work, I have had so many shouting matches with them

I have ordered some disks,Blue-ray M-disks,5x25GB ones for £17, they will keep data safe hopefully

👍

The problem with optical drives is that they are so slow to write to
I have a load of blank DVDs, so I am backing up some files to them, but boy does it take a while.
got a problem with some blue-ray disks I have, they write halfway and then come up with a error. Never used to have this issue with optical drives. Maybe it is because they were cheap unknown, the M Blu-ray discs i got are fine.
I may have a look for some brand name ones, may cost a little more, but worth the extra and still cheaper than buying a load of usb pen drives.

I know I am replying to myself
I have just done some checking online for prices and stuff, and I may have been wrong about prices

On amaozn,
Memory Stick 32GB 10 Pack ENUODA USB Stick 2.0 Flash Drive Swivel Design USB Memory Sticks Pen Storage (10 Mixed Color) is £34.99, which works out at around 16p per GB.

Again from Amaozn, 20 x Traxdata Blu-Ray 25Gb 4x BD-R Blank Discs - White Inkjet Printable (2 x 10 Packs) is £16.99, which is around 85p per GB.

That is a fair difference in price. ok there are cheaper disks, but not sure what they are like and I still don't think I would get down to 16p a GB.

I do have some problems with pen drives, one is that with cheap unknown brand ones, again is reliability and what chips they use, the second is they are difficult to label and the third is that they can be rewritten if my machine had a virus, optical disks can't once closed.

The other thing is I have had a problem with Usb for a while now, USB drives will only work on usb2 ports, plug them into the usb 3 ports and they are not recognised.
i thought it was just my machine, but I built a machine for my brother a while back and that has the same problem, I think it is a AMD chip set thing.