Brought my CD-DVD combo drive in unwrittable state any ideas to bail out?

Tue Nov 9 02:42:49 UTC 2004

Hello list,

I have the following problem so I am looking for any good ideas.
Recently I tried to read in FC2 a write protected CD that I had been
able to burn with Clone CD (from the WinXP side) using 'readcd'. It
read through the CD and gave me all the usual errors for the bad
sectors but since I used the '-noerror' flag the process went on until
it finished.

Then I tried to burn the CD image on a CD+RW using the '-w' flag. It
didn't go through giving me an error message about the media being
high speed while the drive is low speed which is clearly not the case.

So that's where the problem starts. Now before you jump on me telling
me that its media related I have to make as clear as possible that I
have checked this possibility and it is 100% ruled out. I have been
using the same CD-RW media since day one with no problem and I have
tried a bunch of them just to make sure that it's not a glitch on the
single one that I tried to use. I've tried burning in CD-R as well to
no avail.

So here is a typical error message that I get when I try to burn on
any kind of media:

# cdrecord -v -gracetime=2 -dev=ATAPI:0,0,0 -tao test.iso
Cdrecord-Clone 2.01-dvd (i686-pc-linux-gnu) Copyright (C) 1995-2004
Jörg Schilling
Note: This version is an unofficial (modified) version with DVD support
Note: and therefore may have bugs that are not present in the original.
Note: Please send bug reports or support requests to
http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla
Note: The author of cdrecord should not be bothered with problems in
this version.
TOC Type: 1 = CD-ROM
scsidev: 'ATAPI:0,0,0'
devname: 'ATAPI'
scsibus: 0 target: 0 lun: 0
Use of ATA is preferred over ATAPI.
Warning: Using ATA Packet interface.
Warning: The related Linux kernel interface code seems to be unmaintained.
Warning: There is absolutely NO DMA, operations thus are slow.
Using libscg version 'schily-0.8'.
SCSI buffer size: 64512
atapi: 1
Device type    : Removable CD-ROM
Version        : 0
Response Format: 2
Capabilities   :
Vendor_info    : 'SONY    '
Identifikation : 'DVD+RW DW-P50A  '
Revision       : '1.8f'
Device seems to be: Generic mmc2 DVD-ROM.
Current: 0x000A
Profile: 0x001B
Profile: 0x001A
Profile: 0x0010
Profile: 0x000A (current)
Profile: 0x0009
Profile: 0x0008
Using generic SCSI-3/mmc   CD-R/CD-RW driver (mmc_cdr).
Driver flags   : MMC-3 SWABAUDIO BURNFREE
Supported modes: TAO PACKET SAO SAO/R96R RAW/R96R
Drive buf size : 8112896 = 7922 KB
Drive DMA Speed: 2256 kB/s 12x CD 1x DVD
FIFO size      : 4194304 = 4096 KB
Track 01: data     7 MB
Total size:        8 MB (00:48.72) = 3654 sectors
Lout start:        8 MB (00:50/54) = 3654 sectors
Current Secsize: 2048
ATIP info from disk:
  Indicated writing power: 3
  Reference speed: 6
  Is not unrestricted
  Is erasable
  Disk sub type: High speed Rewritable (CAV) media (1)
  ATIP start of lead in:  -11635 (97:26/65)
  ATIP start of lead out: 359849 (79:59/74)
  1T speed low:  4 1T speed high: 10
  2T speed low:  4 2T speed high:  0 (reserved val  6)
  power mult factor: 1 5
  recommended erase/write power: 3
  A1 values: 24 1A BC
  A2 values: 26 B2 26
Disk type:    Phase change
Manuf. index: 3
Manufacturer: CMC Magnetics Corporation
Blocks total: 359849 Blocks current: 359849 Blocks remaining: 356195
Speed set to 1411 KB/s
Starting to write CD/DVD at speed   8.0 in real TAO mode for single session.
Last chance to quit, starting real write    0 seconds. Operation starts.
Waiting for reader process to fill input buffer ... input buffer ready.
trackno=0
BURN-Free is ON.
Turning BURN-Free off
Performing OPC...
cdrecord: Input/output error. send opc: scsi sendcmd: no error
CDB:  54 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
status: 0x2 (CHECK CONDITION)
Sense Bytes: 70 00 03 00 00 00 00 12 00 00 00 00 73 03 00 00 00 00 00
00 00 00 00 00 00 00
Sense Key: 0x3 Medium Error, Segment 0
Sense Code: 0x73 Qual 0x03 (power calibration area error) Fru 0x0
Sense flags: Blk 0 (not valid)
cmd finished after 45.225s timeout 60s
cdrecord: OPC failed.
Writing  time:   45.261s
cdrecord: fifo had 64 puts and 0 gets.
cdrecord: fifo was 0 times empty and 0 times full, min fill was 100%.

I have tried rebooting of course, booting to WinXP and trying to use
the burning software that I have over there and nothing seems to work.
I have uninstalled the driver, disabled the hardware (in WinXP side)
rebooted, took off the battery and hit the reset key (it is a laptop)
nothing seems to be able to reset the drive into a proper writing
state.

The reading process is fine, I can read everything, including
previously burned CD+RWs of the same brand that now give me an error
message about.
I have tried to burn on lowest speed CD-Rs as well just to see if I
have that ability but it didn't work either.

So any ideas on how to 'shock' my drive back to normal operation would
be greatly appreciated. The last thing that I could think of was redo
a firmware update that recently came up for the drive hoping that it
will reset the state to normal but it didn't.

In case you don't see it from the above error message my drive is a
SONY DVD+RW DW-P50A on a Compaq Presario 2500.

Let me know of any good ideas guys! I've lost my ability to backup my
system and that is so... terrifying!!!!! :-)

Thanks
FIlippos