Hi I have a sony dvd rw DRA 800-A which seems to work ok the thing is it burns onto DVD+RW discs without a problem and i know in the past ive used DVD-RW discs because i have the evidence but when i try to burn onto DVD-RW discs they are rejected saying incompatable with the burner or the 800-A gives a "no disc" error message the burning software i use is either convertXTOdvd or image burn

Various Sony DRU models burn DVD-R or DVD-RW disks... They will not burn +RW in our experience... its the minus vs the plus you need to watch for.
Get back to us I my information is incorrect... Because we have had considerable trouble with certain Sony machines, no matter what disks are used.

Sorry, I misread your post. Our luck, as described, is with the Minus RW and Minus R... No luck at all with the DRU model and the Plus R or Plus RW.

Hi raybay thanks for your reply +RW and +R are fine I have -RW discs which I must have burnt so it must have done them once but for some reason not any more just wondered if anyone knew why

There are a lot of mysteries involved in CD and DVD burning... Some have all their lasers on one board. Others have independent lasers, and it does not take much change in position for a laser to be out of alignment.
Non-Working DVD and CD drives are among the most common reasons people visit repair shops.
It is easier and cheaper to replace the drive than to figger out why it failed.
Some drives commonly fail more than others... in our experience the HL, HLDS, Sony Nec, Sony Optiarc, Acer, Asus, and HP drives fail much earlier than Plextor (the best usually though some Plextor models are turkeys) Pioneer, LG, LiteOn, Samsung, and a few others seem to last much longer... but they all fail sooner or later... and those used more frequently fail more quickly.

I am having the same problem with the exact same drive. Although, mine burns the DVD+RWs only. Whats even more strange, is that the only disks I can get to work with it are Maxell DVD+RWs. No other brand will work. I tried flashing the BIOS for it because there IS a new one available, but that didn't work either. Raybay is completely correct though, it IS more logical to just replace the drive completely than to try to worry about fixing it.

Thanks for your replys............. will stick with this for now ill just use +RWs they work fine (for now)

yes good choice