Slow Plextor with firmware upgrade

[pringsmuth]

Although this CDRW is not qalified by Dantz on the Mac, I had been using my OWC Firewire Plexwriter 24/10/40A with firmware version 1.02 quite successfully with Retrospect and Mac OS X 10.1.4. I could get reasonable recording speed, usually better than 80 MB per minute, although occasionally I would burn a coaster.

 

 

 

I updated to firmware version 1.04. Now I am only recording CDs at 8 MB per minute (10 times slower) with Retrospect. Verifying is still fast.

 

 

 

When I look at the recordable area of the CD, I notice that the newly written data track is lighter than the previously written data. It appears to be not burned as much as the previous data on the CD. When Retrospect calls for a new CD, the recording is still at 8 MB per minute, at least 10 times slower than before the firmware upgrade.

 

 

 

The media I am using is Verbatim 1x - 24X, the same media as I was using before.

 

 

 

The reply from Plextor support was "Sometimes a firmware update will introduce problems into particular systems. I'd recommend you revert to the previous version and see if that works for

 

you."

 

 

 

With so many recording devices, permutations of interfaces, and firmware versions on the market, it must be impossible for Dantz to keep up. I wonder if there is any way to for users to assist Dantz and device manufacturers with the software to make things work. Are there software tools that can be used to find out why packet writing is not working well?

[pringsmuth]

For what it's worth, several days after I posted the problem with slow writing with Retrospect for OS X on my Plexwriter 24/10/40/A, the machine started working very fast again.

 

 

 

The latest Retrospect log report shows:

 

5/27/2002 10:47:30 PM: 3 execution errors.

 

Completed: 659 files, 262.6 MB

 

Performance: 166.6 MB/minute (136.9 copy, 212.8 compare)

 

 

 

I wonder if it was dust in the device.