CD/DVD Driver problem

[BJORNO020]

Hello guys,

I got this Sony/NEC OptiArc 7173A DVD writer/reader. But the problem is, it's only reading. When I want to burn a CD, it doesn't detect my empty CD/DVD..

Is this a driver update problem?

Please help, thanks in advance

 

[Karsten75]

Wow, that's one old optical drive! Are you sure? According to an article right here on Tom's, it's an PATA (IDE) drive from ca. 2006?

If that is the case, then a good chance is that it's not recognizing the media that you put in it. There are DVD ROM and DVD RAM and DVD R/W types of media. I've not done the research to check which media types your drive can burn, but that's where I would start looking.

 

[BJORNO020]

Well, I got it as a present, cuz my other broke..

Thanks for the answer I think that's the problem.
If I buy a new one, can I burn every media form?

Thanks for the answer!

 

[Karsten75]

You have to be really careful. Some optical drives have more capabilities than others.

Here's my drive's capabilities as laid out by Speccy: http://i.imgur.com/6RwBUCZ.png You can see that it will read more media than it can write. It does bite me in the butt from time to time.