DVD-RWs & DVD+RWs

[drmacintosh]

I am working with an external Plextor 740U/F DVD burner on a Power Macintosh G4 (Gigabit Ethernet)400 MHz that is running OS X v10.3.9 "Panther". I have two versions of Roxio's Toast Titanium v5.2.3 & v7.0.2 installed. The problem that I am having is in both versions. The first time that I use a DVD-RW or DVD+RW that has been newly removed from the shrink wrapping, I am able to successfully get a burn. Whenever the DVD-RW or DVD+RW has been erased & is to be reused, just before another burn is to be performed, I get the message that this disc is full & to try another disc that can be written to. I also have Wintel based computers that from Nero OEM that has come with the DVD recorder, I am successfully able to reuse the DVD-RW or DVD+RW when it has been erased. I am using Maxell DVDs. According to Plextor they were stumped & have escalated the issue to the support engineers for further investigation. In the meantime while combing the Toast Titanium support section of the Roxio website, they suggest to try a different brand of media or else it could be a defective DVD recorder. I did this with no luck. The recorder does not appear to be defective because it works on the other Wintel computers successfully. Please help here.

[albloom]

Are you sure you're erasing those puppies?

A disk utility entry for a disc has three items:

1. device name
2..... disc name
3......... session name

You erase by hi-liting the device name.

PCs and such default to "write session" (make appendable) and RW
discs can be added to. Apple doesn't even offer that option for DVDs.

And I've noticed that my machine doesn't like DVD-RWs at all. DVD
Player pretends to work, but it shows a black screen. Disconcerting.

[MisterMe]

Guys, I cannot comment on external drives or third-party software. But, the Apple SuperDrive explicitly supports CD, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD, and DVD-R. I believe that some newer models also support CD+R/RW and DVD+R. Before releasing the optical SuperDrive, Apple used DVD-RAM in its G4 towers. Apple does not support DVD-RW or DVD+RW.

[DeltaMac]

Originally Posted by MisterMe

Guys, I cannot comment on external drives or third-party software. But, the Apple SuperDrive explicitly supports CD, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD, and DVD-R. I believe that some newer models also support CD+R/RW and DVD+R. Before releasing the optical SuperDrive, Apple used DVD-RAM in its G4 towers. Apple does not support DVD-RW or DVD+RW.

Most of this info is quite outdated. All recent (maybe the last two years) Macs and SuperDrives provided by Apple support CD-R/RW, DVD-R/RW, and DVD+R/RW
Check this link for suggested info on a recent Apple-supplied superdrive (the Pioneer DVR-117D)
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=42718
CD formats with a '+' in them (except for CD+G, which only defines the subcode channels of an audio CD) are usually typographical errors. CD+R format does not exist.

[MisterMe]

Originally Posted by DeltaMac

Most of this info is quite outdated. All recent (maybe the last two years) Macs and SuperDrives provided by Apple support CD-R/RW, DVD-R/RW, and DVD+R/RW
Check this link for suggested info on a recent Apple-supplied superdrive (the Pioneer DVR-117D)
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=42718
CD formats with a '+' in them (except for CD+G, which only defines the subcode channels of an audio CD) are usually typographical errors. CD+R format does not exist.

This is all good and fine, but the OP does not have a new machine. His issue is more relevant to this Apple webpage.

[DeltaMac]

Originally Posted by MisterMe

This is all good and fine, but the OP does not have a new machine. His issue is more relevant to this Apple webpage.

Maybe, but does not address the poster's issue, which is trying to reuse (erase) DVD-RW.
The Mac OS X has supported DVD-RW since sometime during Jaguar, and DVD+R/RW somewhere in Panther. The problem was no Apple Drive directly supported DVD+R, and the system did not directly support that format. Toast is an app that would provide that support, if the hardware has that capability.
If the DVD-RW is supported by the hardware, and software, then you should be able to erase the disk using Disk Utility, and reuse it.
I have not found any way to do multiple sessions on a DVD-R/RW on a Mac.

[drmacintosh]

I now have another anomaly. After speaking with Plextor support, I have been told that the engineers that my case has been escalated to could not reproduce the problem that I described. I was told by the representative that I spoke with @ Plextor that this sounds that since the DVD recorder works well within the OEM version of Nero that came with the recorder & since from a Macintosh the engineers @ Plextor could not reproduce the problem that it sounds as if the recording software could be the problem. I responded to them saying "How can this be when two different OSes on two different hard drives in the same computer OSX v10.3.9 "Panther" & OSX v10.2.8 "Jaguar" run into the same issue" & to that the representative responded "I am sorry that we "Plextor" do not have a solution for you". Funny isn't it when there is no fix to go ahead & blame the least likely culprit, the CD/DVD recording software.

[DeltaMac]

Ignoring Toast completely for the moment - Is your issue still that you cannot re-use a DVD-RW after it has been written once?
What procedure do you use to erase the DVD-RW. It must be erased before you can re-use the disk, and no software can erase other than Disk Utility, AFAIK. Does the erase from Disk Utility successfully complete? Probably should take at least a couple of hours.