Hello hello.

I know it's not the best first post, but at least I've lurked for a few years so I'm not totally witless. Today while trying to rip my never played copy of House of Low Culture - Edward's Lament, I got sync errors on every track, quality never breaking 40%. I found this odd as the disc was in perfect condition and never played. I've been using EAC for a few years and never once had this issue.

So I popped in a disc I had managed to play successfully before as well. 99% quality for the most part. Certified accurate ripped and all that loveliness. It too was doing the same thing. Now, when I open my disc tray I see a troublesome red light inside. Of course, I could be entirely ignorant and it might have always been on, but red has never struck me as a colour that means "GO".

My drive is an OEM ATAPI DVD A DH16A1L SCSI, which kindly came with my computer when I purchased it in August of 2007. The driver for it appears to be up to date, versoin 6.6001.18000.

Hopefully I haven't made a complete twat of myself, and haven't forgotten to mention anything too important. I suppose the bottom line here is, do I need to buy a new drive? Thanks for reading this far.

tl;dr: F'd up when it shouldn't. Need to get a new thing?

Have you tried updating the firmware for your drive? You can try that before making any conclusions about a new drive. You might just have to purchase a new drive if it still continues to not rip correctly. That isn't all bad news as you can pick up pretty good DVD burners for less than $50 these days.

Well, any attempt to run Nero InfoTool to get the firmware crashes the program, which is an ill omen to be sure.

Uh-oh, that isn't very good then. You might just have to put down the money for a new drive. I suggest some Google searching to find a firmware updater though, you never know. Even flashing the firmware and installing the same version might do the trick. I mention this as my desktop has a DVD+-R/RW (no DL support) Lite-On drive that was acting up. It would refuse to read any discs, rip accurately, or do anything. It had the latest firmware so I simply re-installed the firmware it already had. That fixed the problem and now the drive works perfectly.

Check the computer for virus. I had one that messed up the drive badly.

Try burst mode with test&copy. While it's not as good as secure mode as long as CRCs match your rip might just be okay.

Red just happens to be the wavelength of light used to read and write CDs and DVDs. The color has no other significance.

I wasn't able to google any replacement firmware for my old drive. So, I bought a new SATA drive for $30CDN. It's a bit louder but boatloads more accurate. An LG GSA-H62N for anyone curious.

For anyone in the GTA, I bought it from Canada Computers which provided a year warranty and 7 day direct replacement. Thanks a lot to everyone who took the time to help me out.

Also yeah, I was aware of the colour a laser is supposed to look. It just seemed odd that it would be on with no disc in the drive. The more you know, I guess.

EDIT:

So uh... after a successful rip, the new drive is doing the same thing the old one did which leaves me to think I've really gone and f'd it up.