Windows 7 Burning Questions

[seekermeister]

I just burned an image of Suse to DVD, but before succeeding, I made a number of coasters on two other ODDs. Coasters aren't anything new, but some things about the failures make me wonder. On the first attempts on one drive, Imgburn announced failures at exactly the same spot on 3 attempts. The problem wasn't due to a bad download, because I used the same iso for the successful burn. If there was something wrong with my hardware, it seems unlikely that the failures would be so predictable. The media that I'm using is of good quality and condition, so I'm left wondering why those tries failed as they did.

I tried again on a second ODD, which also failed, but at a point far beyond where I had gotten previously. Unlike with the first drive, where the buffers remain fairly stable and full, the second drive's device buffer jumped around radically quite a bit, but not enough that I felt that it caused an buffer underrun. I'm thinking that the buffer behavior may have been caused by a bad connection, so I'm going to replace the cable, but even if so, that doesn't exactly explain the burn failure.

Both drives pose questions in my mind, but the problem with the first drive puzzles me most. Can anyone offer a logical explanation for it?

 

[helpifIcan]

Tried cleaning the DVD lens lately?

 

[seekermeister]

Actually, no. I'm going to, but I have to track down the cleaning disk first. That could explain one of the drive's problem, but it doesn't sound right for the one that kept failing at exactly the same point each time. It would seem that a dirty lens would cause problems either all the time, or at random points.