OK Guys... I am stumped. iTunes & Superdrive trouble, is this hardware?

[demodonkey]

Prior to the election I had a great iTunes playlist of Anti-Bush songs. I burned many copies to audio CD and gave to everyone from kids at Rallies to my State Senator! Always worked great and I had no problems burning the CDs, for which I purchased regular Maxell data CDs (not the slightly more expensive ones marked "Music"). Again -- NO Problems doing this.

Recently I was asked for more copies. Using the SAME kind of CD-R on the SAME computer with the SAME playlist... I can't even finish one CD. The Superdrive writes the song to the CD, but when "finishing" the disk I get the error message: "The device drained its buffer without burn underrun protection". It then spits out the ruined and unusable CD.

Apple Tech notes online say to shut down all other programs (even though it worked in the fall with big programs running in the background like Photoshop), lower the burning speed, and try "better" media. NONE of these helps, I am still ruining disks.

I have a 1.25 GHz eMac with 1 full Gig of RAM, and a Superdrive. Was running 10.3.7 (upgraded to 10.3.8 but makes no change in the problem). Internal 80 GB hard disk is not even 1/4 full.

Am still under warranty (got computer last May.) Am new to System X and to CD burning (this was my first new Mac since 1998!) but NOT new to Mac (think I told you all before, this was my 9th or 10th one!) So is this hardware? Bad superdrive? Do I drag this big heavy thing into my nearest Apple Genius Bar? Or is something corrupted?? Help! :shrug:

On edit: The drive HAS started making a sort of intermittent soft grunting sound when it mounts other CDs, like a photo CD from the film developer... they often take several tries to mount... hmmm maybe it IS hardware in that case?

[justiceischeap]

1. It could be hardware

However there are lots of discussions on the Apple boards about 10.3.8 being a nasty update. I haven't and won't update to it. Maybe try going back to 10.3.7 and see if it works again.

[demodonkey]

3. It did the same thing on 10.3.7...

:shrug:

On edit: Other than this CD burning problem (which I had before I did the 10.3.8 upgrade), 10.3.8 seems pretty good here (knock on wood). Haven't had it too long but it's running fine so far...

[ralps]

2. My Superdrive recently started doing what yours seems to be doing.

I tried writing a movie on to a blank cd and it spit it out. Then it would not even read DVD's that I bought. I took it into the Genius Bar at an Apple Store near me and since i have Applecare for my Powerbook they were able to replace the superdrive at no cost to me. If you have an Apple Store near you I would suggest that you make an appointment with the Genius Bar there.
:hi:

[demodonkey]

4. I didn't even think of trying to read a DVD, good idea.

If it won't read or write to DVD, I will go to the Apple Store. Am not crazy about lugging it in for repair, because the eMac is over 50 lbs to transport... its a great value cost-wise, but the trade-off is that eMac is one of the last really, um, "bulky" Macs with a heavy CRT (I hope!)

BTW, yes I am under Applecare, and supposedly this would be covered.

Thanks! If anyone has any other ideas or had the same thing happen, PLEASE let me know!

[bullimiami]

5. you cant set buffer underrun like with toast

but you can set the speed. slow it down. i dont know what the max speed of your burner is
my dvr104 has a max cd speed of 24x. i usually use toast though. i dont burn from itunes.

remember if you are burning audio cds of mp3s they need to convert too.

i would slow your burner down to 8x first and see if that fixes it.


the noise thing is suspicious though. if its under warranty (should be 1 yr may when you got it) id make apple fix it.