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Topic: Somehow broke LITE-ON DVDRW SOHW-1693S (Read 4628 times) previous topic - next topic
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Somehow broke LITE-ON DVDRW SOHW-1693S

The symptoms are that my drive plays CDs with a lot of static and some skipping. EAC secure (C2 error correction) extraction proceeds at a normal speed, but the CRCs are wrong and the audio skips once every few seconds. DVD playback fails (stops immediately), though PowerDVD is able to read the volume label.

I did not have/notice these symptoms before today. The last CD I ripped before today was an AC/DC Live CD from a few weeks ago.  That rip is fine and plays well. Testing that CD again, and some other known good CDs and a DVD, results in the symptoms I described in the first paragraph. Furthermore, these CDs and DVD play well in my cheap non-C2 capable generic drive.

Here is what happened today. I was playing a mix CD that my friend mailed to me. At the beginning of track six, the music playing off the CD in foobar2000 started to skip and my computer froze. After it recovered, I thought there might be a problem with the CD, and attempted to do a secure EAC rip of it. The rip became stuck on track six. I attempted to manually eject the CD while the computer was on. I realize now that I read not to do this a long time ago. My bad. Anyway, the paper clip I was using was kinda small for an ejection bar. Something slipped when I was pressing the clip into the emergency eject hole. I heard a noise that sounded like some kind of electrical grinding or perhaps the sound of something scraping against something else. Anyway, because the CD didn't eject when I used the paper clip, I eventually used a small piece of plastic to successfully eject the disc with the computer still on. After some coaxing, I was able to unfreeze EAC, which had frozen during the extraction, and reboot. At this point, I was worried about my drive, so I started doing tests as mentioned above with the known good CDs and DVDs. I obtained the results I mentioned at the beginning of this post. So, I assumed I had screwed up my drive somehow.

I looked into the drive with the door open using a flash light. It appears that the emergency eject hole allows one to push on a plastic lobe that is eventually attached to a rack that opens and closes the drive door. I didn't see any electronics in the emergency eject area, so I thought the paper clip had perhaps slipped up into the surface of the CD, grinding it and throwing bits of the surface into the rest of the drive. On inspection, the surface of the CD is unscarred, so I don't think that is what happened. By the way, the CD is black - like the old PlayStation disks. There is a printed label screen on the top of the CD, but the inside ring says "Is it live or is it Memorex?".

Perhaps trying to manually operate the drive open/close mechanism with the CD being spun by the drive damaged some of the motors and the electric circuits attached to them. I don't know.

I then decided to check the rips of the tracks before track 6. I expected these rips to be flawless because they finished before the extraction froze and before I attempted to eject the CD. They have errors and skips too, though there are fewer of them than in the tracks that I ripped after I thought I broke the drive. Given that the drive is supposed to be able to do a secure rip, and by my ears has been doing so for about a year now, I find it odd that the tracks before track 6 are mostly marked as perfect even though they are clearly flawed.

So, what do you think happened to the drive?

Here is the extraction log of the mix CD. I ejected the CD after the extraction of track 6 started.

EAC extraction logfile from 17. January 2007, 20:01 for CD
Unknown Artist / Unknown Title

Used drive  : LITE-ON DVDRW SOHW-1693S  Adapter: 0  ID: 2
Read mode  : Secure with C2, accurate stream, disable cache
Combined read/write offset correction : 0
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No

Used output format : C:\Program Files\FLAC\flac.exe  (User Defined Encoder)
                    128 kBit/s
                    Additional command line options : -T "artist=%a" -T "title=%t" -T "album=%g" -T "date=%y" -T "tracknumber=%n" -T "genre=%m" -8 %s

Other options      :
    Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
    Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
    Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000


Track  1
    Filename C:\Documents and Settings\Chris\My Documents\v1\Unknown Artist  Unknown Title 01 Track01.wav

    Peak level 25.1 %
    Track quality 100.0 %
    Copy CRC 67145C6F
    Copy OK

Track  2
    Filename C:\Documents and Settings\Chris\My Documents\v1\Unknown Artist  Unknown Title 02 Track02.wav

    Peak level 25.1 %
    Track quality 100.0 %
    Copy CRC 22E8B186
    Copy OK

Track  3
    Filename C:\Documents and Settings\Chris\My Documents\v1\Unknown Artist  Unknown Title 03 Track03.wav

    Peak level 25.1 %
    Track quality 99.9 %
    Copy CRC DA8B9D95
    Copy OK

Track  4
    Filename C:\Documents and Settings\Chris\My Documents\v1\Unknown Artist  Unknown Title 04 Track04.wav

    Peak level 25.1 %
    Track quality 100.0 %
    Copy CRC 9901E467
    Copy OK

Track  5
    Filename C:\Documents and Settings\Chris\My Documents\v1\Unknown Artist  Unknown Title 05 Track05.wav

    Peak level 25.1 %
    Track quality 100.0 %
    Copy CRC BF861FC3
    Copy OK

Track  6
    Filename C:\Documents and Settings\Chris\My Documents\v1\Unknown Artist  Unknown Title 06 Track06.wav

    Suspicious position 0:00:04

    Missing samples
    Peak level 0.0 %
    Track quality 96.8 %
    Copy finished

Track  7
    Copy aborted

Somehow broke LITE-ON DVDRW SOHW-1693S

Reply #1 –
Just a guess but maybe there was something (crud) the disc that fell on the optics when it was spun up.  Try a good lens cleaning.
"You can fight without ever winning, but never win without a fight."  Neil Peart  'Resist'

Somehow broke LITE-ON DVDRW SOHW-1693S

Reply #2 –
Quote from: dreamliner77 on
Just a guess but maybe there was something (crud) the disc that fell on the optics when it was spun up.  Try a good lens cleaning.


Probably the above. Check your drive's documentation for cleaning procedures, though. Some manufacturers (Plextor, for example) advise against cleaning kits and recommend service instead. If the drive is under warranty, you should be fine.
EAC>1)fb2k>LAME3.99 -V 0 --vbr-new>WMP12 2)MAC-Extra High

Somehow broke LITE-ON DVDRW SOHW-1693S

Reply #3 –
Quote from: LANjackal on
Quote from: dreamliner77 on

Just a guess but maybe there was something (crud) the disc that fell on the optics when it was spun up.  Try a good lens cleaning.


Probably the above. Check your drive's documentation for cleaning procedures, though. Some manufacturers (Plextor, for example) advise against cleaning kits and recommend service instead. If the drive is under warranty, you should be fine.

Would such a situation be able to take out both the DVD playing and CD playing capabilities at the same time? I thought they used different LASERs?

Somehow broke LITE-ON DVDRW SOHW-1693S

Reply #4 –
Somehow I don't think that's generally the case, but I'll leave that for someone more knowledgeable.
EAC>1)fb2k>LAME3.99 -V 0 --vbr-new>WMP12 2)MAC-Extra High

Somehow broke LITE-ON DVDRW SOHW-1693S

Reply #5 –
DVD-ROMs do use the same laser but sometimes situations occur when the device is unable to read CD's but still can play DVD's. Due to the differences in the wavelength, the laser might be unable to focus.
POT might need tweaking.

Somehow broke LITE-ON DVDRW SOHW-1693S

Reply #6 –
Check the device manager to see if your drive dropped from DMA mode to PIO mode.

-brendan

Somehow broke LITE-ON DVDRW SOHW-1693S

Reply #7 –
Quote from: bhoar on
Check the device manager to see if your drive dropped from DMA mode to PIO mode.

-brendan

Indeed, it has. Do you think I should re-enable DMA mode and then try a rip? I haven't cleaned the drive yet.

Somehow broke LITE-ON DVDRW SOHW-1693S

Reply #8 –
Typically the only way to move it back to DMA mode is to:

a) select the drive in the device manager and delete it.
b) select the ide channel in the device manager that the drive was connected to and delete it.
c) reboot

it'll reinstall the devices on the next boot and should give you back dma.

-brendan

Somehow broke LITE-ON DVDRW SOHW-1693S

Reply #9 –
If your drive is still i warranty, try to RMA it and get a newer and more capable one  Ive heard the new 18x LiteOn s are very good
 

Somehow broke LITE-ON DVDRW SOHW-1693S

Reply #10 –
Quote from: bhoar on
Typically the only way to move it back to DMA mode is to:

a) select the drive in the device manager and delete it.
b) select the ide channel in the device manager that the drive was connected to and delete it.
c) reboot

it'll reinstall the devices on the next boot and should give you back dma.

-brendan


Brendan, you hit the nail directly on the head in both your diagnosis and recovery procedure. Well done. DVD playback, CD playback, and CD rips are now fully functional — even my test track CRC came back identical to the old one. Thank you.

dreamliner77, LANjackal, TREX6662k6 and molnart, thank you for your thoughtful and well reasoned replies.