[Pkg-opt-media-team] Bug#724964: growisofs: fails to burn DVD-RW media with error "SK=5h/ILLEGAL MODE FOR THIS TRACK"

[Vincent Lefevre]

Hi,

On 2013-09-30 10:46:21 +0200, Thomas Schmitt wrote:
> > I forgot to say that there were no such problems a few months ago,
> > with the same DVD and the same machine (and drive).
> 
> This is a common pattern with ageing drives and DVD-RW.
> 
> I am developer of burn software myself (libburn ... xorriso)
> and am currently discussing a very similar case with one
> of the users. He experimented with DVD-RW. Blanking, formatting,
> burning data, ... forth and back. Suddenly he experienced
>   3 73 04 PROGRAM MEMORY AREA UPDATE FAILURE
> and the medium was not usable any more.
> 
> Then he put that DVD-RW into the drive of a laptop.
> There it is still usable.
> He bought new DVD-RW. No luck on his usual drive.
> But they are usable with the laptop's one.
> My own older drives throw errors on DVD-RW or burn them to an
> unreadble state.

Thanks for the information. I wish growisofs be distributed with
some FAQ. Moreover, in case of error, in addition to technical
information, I think it should give practical information about
what could be wrong.

> The capability to write DVD+RW deteriorates much later
> than the capability to deal with DVD-RW.

After getting problems with DVD-RW, this is also what I've read.
I've also noticed that there are many Debian bug reports concerning
DVD-RW, but not DVD+RW.

Now, when I burn my old DVD+RW's (purchased in December 2005) with
the same drive, I get I/O errors when I re-read them, though they
have been burnt only a few times.

> > I suspect that the blank command actually failed (but why?),
> > READ DISC INFORMATION:
> >  Disc status:           appendable
> > ...
> > READ TRACK INFORMATION[#2]:
> >  Track State:           invisible incremental
> > ...
> >  Free Blocks:           1480416*2KB
> 
> Indeed the medium is still reported by the drive as being ready
> for more sessions (e.g. by growisofs -M) of up to 2.9 GB.
> I.e. blanking did not have the normal effect.

Maybe a bug in dvd+rw-format, which should have detected the error
(the 0.0 for 10 minutes was suspicious).

> > > You may also try to format it,
> > That's much better [...] I'm currently burning it, with no errors.
> 
> Let's hope that it is entirely readable.

With the same drive, everything is OK, by reading the DVD entirely
and comparing.

-- 
Vincent Lefèvre <vincent at vinc17.net> - Web: <http://www.vinc17.net/>
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Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / AriC project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)