I hate my CD burner

[KingKoopa]

I have a plextor 40x external usb 2.0 cd burner... it's worked great for a couple of years but lately has been making coasters about 9 of 10 times. i was using roxio easy cd creater, which came with the drive, but about six months ago, it suddenly wasn't able to recognize that the burner was plugged in... i downloaded and reinstalled roxio and still had the same problem.

since then, i've used nero, alcohol (this one works most of the time, but i think it only does images, which doesn't help me make an audio cd), and real player and all of them seem to screw the disc up not long into the burn.

i assume i'm having a buffer problem--i've tried burning as low as 4x and it isn't helping... I suppose my next step is to terminate every running program except explorer and the burning program?

Anyone have any advice on my situation, think my burner is crapped out, or have any programs they can recommend that prevent buffer underruns?

 

[Longhorn Al]

I've got the same problem.

 

[TexasOwnzYou]

they tend to die out over time.

go toThe Link and download the latest firmware for your drive. this may or may not fix it. if it doesnt, just get a new one. you can get a new internal for $15 and put it in a usb case.

 

[schnarkle]

How much free disk space do you have? If you are low on disk space you'll have problems burning since the data goes onto disk cache temporarily.

Also check for spyware that could be hindering performance.

 

[MrPhlegm]

also defrag your harddrive.