Toast 9.01/9.02 and sense key medium errors

Have you checked (or posted this on) the Roxio Toast forums? What brands of -R or +R discs have you tried? A couple things to try are to first Save as Disc Image with Toast and then burn that file using the Image File setting in the Toast Copy window. Also, lower the burn speed to something other than "Best" (which is the fastest speed the drive reports it can burn to that particular media). Don't set the burn speed until after the blank disc is recognized by Toast.

It isn't Roxio's fault. Apple's commitment to becoming Microsoft means that every software update disables another peripheral or feature. The latest OS update now prevents me from burning DVDs on my external via toast or popcorn. The latest Roxio updates won't fix this. I'm dead in the water. I've done every repair, verify, software update, reboot in my 20 year bag of apple tricks, and I simply can no longer burn a dual layer dvd, Of any kind, under any circumstances. I'm not an amatuer. I've used Macs for two decades, but Leopard is just a mess that keeps getting deeper and deeper. Great going Apple.

Tom, I appreciate your frustration but I think you'll find that ranting about Apple in these discussions doesn't get very far. These are the most polite user forums I've ever encountered.

I don't know why you're having trouble burning to external drives after upgrading to Leopard. It isn't a problem for me. I'm a heavy user of Toast (and before Toast 9 used Popcorn 3 often) and nearly always burn to my Firewrie LaCie DVD drive. I don't burn to DL media very often but when I do it is Verbatim DVD+R DL because I know the LaCie drive supports those discs.

You sound a lot like me with your years working with Macs and your knowledge to do troubleshooting and repairs. But something isn't right because Leopard does not prevent using external drives for burning DL discs. What happens when you insert a DL disc when using Toast? When you choose Disc Info from the Toast Recorder menu does it report the media correctly?

If you haven't done this as yet try trashing the Toast plist and prefs files and the Popcorn plist file and restarting those applications.

I've had this problem a few times...

every time I've taken it into the Genius bar it's been the same issue - the drive itself is shot and needs to be replaced.

I don't know how old yours is but there is a good chance that that's the problem. I would look into this. If your having this issue with even OLDER versions of Toast I'd imagine its a hardware issue.