Liteon ldw 451s burner makes cds but not dvds
- Thread starter JR36116
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Bear w/ me, I'm not used to this website..I've tried it in several computers w/ the same results. It was working fine last week and I decided to give it to my son and now it doesn't burn dvds so I had to give him one of my newer burners to apease him. I don't understand why it'll burn cds but not dvds. Other than that it works fine. It even reads a dvd but rejects all the media I put in.
Think of it like your video recorder... The tapes are read and recorded by a "head" in the VCR yes?
A CD/DVD player is the same. Back in the old days, and until relatively recently CDRW/DVDRW drives had a number of different heads. This was nessecary as reading a cd or dvd is not the same as writing a dvd, and so it needed a different laser and write method to do the job (a far far finer laser).
The drive probably has a seperate DVD write head which has burned itself out. It's quite common, especially on heavily used or older drives. It will still read DVD's because the read head is working perfectly well.
That said, with no more information it's early days to be saying that as an absolute certainty, however likely it may be.
First, open device manager, uninstall both the primary and secondary IDE controllers, let it reboot, and it should re-detect and reinstall your devices. Try again and see what happens. Don't be put off by the terminology either - it's just what their called, and the way they're listed.
The second thing to try is a firmware update.
If it deoesn't work after that, It's probably the dvd write head burned out, and it may not be worth the hassle for the price of a new one (£30-40 in the UK)
A CD/DVD player is the same. Back in the old days, and until relatively recently CDRW/DVDRW drives had a number of different heads. This was nessecary as reading a cd or dvd is not the same as writing a dvd, and so it needed a different laser and write method to do the job (a far far finer laser).
The drive probably has a seperate DVD write head which has burned itself out. It's quite common, especially on heavily used or older drives. It will still read DVD's because the read head is working perfectly well.
That said, with no more information it's early days to be saying that as an absolute certainty, however likely it may be.
First, open device manager, uninstall both the primary and secondary IDE controllers, let it reboot, and it should re-detect and reinstall your devices. Try again and see what happens. Don't be put off by the terminology either - it's just what their called, and the way they're listed.
The second thing to try is a firmware update.
If it deoesn't work after that, It's probably the dvd write head burned out, and it may not be worth the hassle for the price of a new one (£30-40 in the UK)
Ii Put It Back In My Computer've Had Good Luck In The Past W/ Liteon And It Worked Fine Until I Put It In My Son's Computer And Then It Wouldn't Burn Dvds Anymore..i Put It Back In My Computer Hoping It Was Only An Incompatability Issue, But That Wasn't The Case.i've Got Plenty Of Electronic Boat Anchors Around Here And Now I Guess I Have One More
I appreciate your help. I've tried reinstalling and uninstalling and did the firmware update too and I don't know what else to try. If the write head is burned out I'll get over it but it just baffles me. I do a lot of computer work but I really don't try to repair hardware. It's easier on my nerves to throw it out and get another. But I want to try to learn why some things fail and why others don't. Like the ability to still write to a cd but not a dvd. Does it use a different laser for each?
It does. 
The DVD burning laser is more powerful than the reading laser, and most certainly more powerful than the CD burning laser.
You might like to look at the article links on this page if you're interested in learning roughly how it all works.
I've yet to find an article on specifically how computer DVDRW drives work yet, but I dare say there's one out there somewhere that deals with the whole thing.
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/dvd13.htm
The DVD burning laser is more powerful than the reading laser, and most certainly more powerful than the CD burning laser.You might like to look at the article links on this page if you're interested in learning roughly how it all works.
I've yet to find an article on specifically how computer DVDRW drives work yet, but I dare say there's one out there somewhere that deals with the whole thing.
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/dvd13.htm
Well that answers that..I guess it must have messed it up when I took it out and put it in my son's computer, since that's when I noticed the problem. I didn't know there was different lasers to burn dvds than to burn cds. I assumed they used the same laser. I'll use it to give someone when I build another and tell them It'll only burn cds. They can't complain about something for nothing, can they? I appreciate your input so I think I'll call it a night and start fresh tomorrow. Hope y'all have a good day. Thanks again
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