[Libburn] lite-on 52327s

[Derek Foreman]

On Mon, 12 Jan 2004, Tiago Cogumbreiro wrote:

> A Seg, 2004-01-12 =E0s 18:26, Derek Foreman escreveu:
> > If you have one of these drives, do _NOT_ use it in conjunction with
> > libburn.
> >
> > I just lost my second one in 3 days.
> >
> > I honestly have no reason to believe libburn is doing anything that is
> > damaging this hardware.  But after 2 dead drives, I'm becoming quite
> > paranoid.
> >
> > I will post a follow up as soon as I have more information.
> >
> Ack! This is strange news... Is this in anyway strangely connected to
> the Mandrake problem with LG drives? Maybe they both use the same broken
> hardware...

The LG problem was truly bizarre. LG decided to use the flush
cache command opcode for their own vendor unique firmware upload command
on some of their cd readers.

The mandrake kernel sent flush cache to all devices on shut down (to get
the hard drives to commit cache to the disk), and the LG cd readers
destroyed their firmware.

Since all burns end with a flush cache command, lite-on better not be
using it for firmware uploads :)

Also, after the drive failed, I tried re-uploading the latest firmware
from windows xp, and it succeeded with no change in operation.

I'm quite puzzled by this.  The last thing I did with the latest drive was
read a cd I'd burnt with libburn.  Everything seemed fine.  I shut down
the machine, booted up this morning, and it didn't recognize any discs at
all.

The first one died while I was blanking with libburn when it still had the
"flood the device with test unit ready commands" bug.  Which, while
stupid, really shouldn't damage hardware.

It really seems impossible that libburn could be responsible, but I have a
second dead drive here.

I've sent an email to lite-on technical support.  hopefully they'll get
back to me before I have to return this drive to the store (really crappy
return policy... I have 4 days left to take it back.)