Problem with disk drive

[elowe]

I'm having a problem with my CDRW drive. I can burn onto a CD-R disk but not a CD-RW disc. My drive won't even read the disc let alone give me access to it. The window simply says "the device is not ready".
Am I messing something up, or have I in the past?

[Murf]

Welocme to CTH

I can burn onto a CD-R disk but not a CD-RW disc. This tells you there is nothing wrong with the drive iteself.

Some burners are particular as to what brand CD's you use. Are both the cd-r and the cd-rw the same brand? What brand are they.

[rockboy]

Welcome.

I recently had a problem reading CD-R's but not CD-RW's or regular CD's. Same thing, wouldn't recognize them at all. It was like the drive was empty. The strange part was that I could burn a CD-R and read the files that it burned until it was ejected then it wouldn't read it again.

It's fairly old so I was ready to chuck it but bought a disc cleaner with brushes to clean the laser lens. Now it works perfect again. Burns all, reads all. Worth a try.

[elowe]

It will write on Maxell and TDK CD-R's but not on a Memorex CD-RW. The Memorex is High Speed, does that have anything to do with it? My HP is about 5 years old, I also put in a new hard drive about a year ago, had no problems writing to CD-R after that though. This is my first time trying to write to a RW.

[rockboy]

It's possible that your drive is too old to read high speed CD-RW's. Technology has come a long way in 5 years.

http://www.cdrfaq.org/faq04.html#S4-46

The disc manufacturers had to change the way the discs were made to accommodate each successive improvement, so older recorders don't work with the newer disks.

You could try some different CD-RW blanks and see if it makes a difference.

[elowe]

thanks for the help all.