DVD Writer

[sprayermick]

My laptop has a built in CD writer but it will not burn DVD's so I purchased a "Matisha" usb plug & play external DVD writer from Amazon and some (25) blank printable DVD discs from a local market but for some reason the writer does not seem to like the discs
in fact out of the 25 only two have written, when I put in a disc the writer keeps whirring
7 clonking as if it is looking for the start of the disc, the make of the discs is Traxdata DVD-R 8X and somebody told me they were cheap & nasty and that I should try another make of disc.
Is this correct or what else would stop the writer not working, and yes it does state DVD R & RW on the casing.

[ChuckFickens]

Try at a lower write speed. but yes the person was right, there are quite large variations in quality of recordable media.

[sprayermick]

Thanks Chuckfickens, I tried at a lower speed but it makes no difference as soon as you put the disc in it seems as though it cannot find the start point as it whirs and clonks and eventualy spits out the disc, so i guess I will have to buy a more expensive brand

[The-HouseHusband]

Check which format your drive uses, you can get two sorts DVD+ & DVD-, this can give the problem you have as well as the drive being unable to recognise some of the poorer quality disc's on the market.

[ChuckFickens]

reading the question again.

You state you've bought DVD-R disks are you sure the drive can write DVD-R disks? and not just DVD+R

[sprayermick]

Thanks The-HouseHusband I thought of that before I bought the thing and it does state on the casing DVD+ DVD- & DVD RW as well as dual layer whatever that is?

[scotman]

It may be that you have a poor batch of discs. I don't recall ever using Traxdata. I find that keeping to either Sony or Verbatim works for me. Most recent difficulty I had was with Imation brand. Also your discs will be marked with a write speed. Set your writer to this speed.

[teedee]

I had the same trouble with Traxdata, i got some Tevion DVD +Rewritable Disc's from Aldi never had any trouble with them.