cd-rom won't read new burned Disc 1

[Rick Stevens]

David Curry wrote:
> Paul M. Bucalo wrote:
> 
>> On Thu, 2005-02-10 at 14:58 -0500, jim lawrence wrote:
>>  
>>
>>> Hi all,
>>> I'm helping a friend out to install FC3.  He burned the ISO images on
>>> his notebook's CD-RW and wants to install FC3 onto a desktop he has. 
>>> The CD-ROM on the Desktop will not read the CD's.  I had him check the
>>> burn CD's with his notebook, and the cd's burned fine, so the Fedora
>>> CD's are fine. What can I tell him about the CD-ROM he has in his 
>>> Desktop?  Buy a new CD-RW ??
>>> -- 
>>>   
>>
>>
>> This topic comes up a lot. Probably always will.
>>
>> CD-RW drives vary in the speed in which they can burn at. Herein lies
>> much of the problem when trying to read a burned disc in another ROM
>> device. Some CD-ROM drives are not able to read CD-R's burned at fast
>> speeds (like over 8X). For this reason, I burn my distro ISO's at 4X
>> even though my burners are able to burn much faster. Even then I am not
>> guaranteed to have a disc that can be read on all of my machines. I have
>> four burners and the four will not necessarily read a CD-R burned from
>> one of the others. This becomes a real pain for me when archiving. :0/
>> I'm betting he did them at 12X or faster. However, if he did burn them
>> at 4X and they work on someone else's machine, but not yours, you should
>> consider the possibility that you have the problem, not him.
>>
>> HTH
>>
>> Paul
>>
>>  
>>
> I have the same problem on an older desktop machine, Jim.  CDs were 
> burned at 4x on my FC2 system, but the CD-Rom on the Pentium class 
> (166Mhz-MMX) will not read the CDs.  (The CD-ROM is supposedly a 4X 
> drive, but it dates to mid-1990s.)  Based on Paul's input, I would try a 
> 2X burn  if I could get the machine to boot again.

Also remember that older CD ROM drives use a different color laser (old
used 670nM lasers, newer uses 630-650nM lasers).  The "redder" lasers
(old) often have problems reading the darker media used on faster CD-Rs.

It isn't necessarily the speed at which it was burned, it's the speed
capacity of the MEDIA.  Try burning using a media with a lighter color
at whatever speed you want.  I'll bet it works.
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- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-   Never test for an error condition you don't know how to handle.  -
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