And this is supposed to save me time… how?

I got my DVD burner today. It’s a 16X, only $50 at Staples. I took a couple of DVD blanks from Steve, the guy whose DVD burner I’ve been using all along. They’re Verbatim 4x and I’ve never had any problem with them in Steve’s drive. But the first couple gave me some weird-ass error, as mentioned in a previous post. My cow orker Rob suggested I try K3B, which is what he uses. In the process of installing it, I needed to chase some dependencies, and one of them suggested that the version of the Linux kernel that I’m forced to use (for ClearCase dependencies) has a SCSI bug. I get it installed and Rob comes over with a blank DVD. This one is a Memorex 4X, but I didn’t think the different media was signficant. It burns cleanly while I’m logged in as root. I log in as myself and try to burn another DVD. I get a few percent through burning, but then the LEDs on my keyboard start flashing and the computer is hung. I power cycled. I thought maybe I’d corrupted that DVD on a previous burn attempt, so I try a few more, with different combinations of being logged in as root or not, being booted to the 2.4.20-8 versus 2.4.20-13.9 kernel, etc. Sometimes burning woudl get part way through and then tell me that I don’t have any media in the drive, other times I get the flashing LEDs and a hung computer. I made a bunch of coasters.

Then Rob tells me that DVD burners are far more sensitive to the media than CD burners are, and I should try the Memorex blanks again. I do, and it works first time.

On the way home, I stopped off and bought a 10 pack of Memorex blanks. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll actually get some work done instead of making coasters.

UPDATE: The Memorex DVD+Rs I bought burn nicely at 16X, and they boot just fine.