DVD-RW erase solution for Toshiba SD-R5002
I have had severe problems with erasing DVD-RW media from IMATION on my new
TOSHIBA SD-R5002 DVD-writer. Now that I have solved problems, maybe there are other users that I can help, giving them some tips that I found out.
The drive was shipped with the VOB Instant CD/DVD (version 6.5) burning application
The very first time I did an erase of an Imation DVD-RW it got defective,
because after that it couldn't be recognized and read/written anymore by any software.
And burning programs hanged my computer.
Then I did something stupid. I installed another burning program, WinOnCD (v 3.8).
After that Instant CD/DVD and Pinnacle Studio 8 were not able anymore to write whatever DVD.
Uninstal WinOnCD and re-install of the 2 other programs didn't work. DVD-writing wasn't possible anymore.
My Studio 8 film-project would not write to DVD and I was devestated.
Then I found out that there was a new driver release (7 febr 2003) on the German VOB website.
Downloading and installing it, worked great, because I could write DVD-media again.
I tried again to erase another DVD-RW, and this one became crippled too.
I began reading newsgroups about this problem, and found out that I wasn't alone with this problem.
Pioneer, Toshiba and Sony drives were often named, but on the Toshiba service pages I could find nothing to help me.
Then I found out that in a forum on the "The Firmware Page" website that Toshiba had released a new firmware for the SD-R5002.
http://forum.rpc1.org/index.php
It has a cracked version too, which makes your burner region-free.
And yes, this new firmware (version 1031) worked for my Imation DVD-RW's. (My old firmware was 1030)
You have to flash it into your burner, using a dos bootable floppy.
But the 2 corrupted DVD-RW's kept giving problems with InstantCD/DVD and I thought I had to throw them away.
Somewhere I had read that using another burning program and fooling it by changing good for bad disk during
the erase proces, could recover them. So I tried a lot and the next remedy worked for me.
1. I installed (a 30 day demo of) Ahead Nero Burning Rom, version 5.5
For download: http://download.com.com/3000-2140-10028984.html 2. put a fresh (good working) DVD-RW in the drive and wait till the led goes out
3. Start Nero (cancel wizard)
4. Choose menu Recorder/Erase Rewritable
5. In the pop-up-menu:
For "erase method" choose: Full-erase
For "erase speed" choose: 1X(1.380 KB/s)
(Watch this carefully. The bad DVD causes the program to give here CD-RW speeds, somewhat till 16X speeds)
6. Don't accept this pop-up menu, but first change the good DVD for the bad one and close the drive door.
7. Now check if the "erase speed" is still 1X, and then you can accept this menu with "Erase"-button
9. This is it, and after one hour of waiting you have a sound DVD-RW back.
