Superdrive refuses to write Dual Layer Media

I'm having the same problems with my MBP early 2008.

I already brought my MBP to repair and they changed my SuperDrive, after I burnt with no success 3 DVD-DL (of 3 different brands) and following the error:
SERVO TRACKING ERROR highlighted by Toast 9.

After the change of the SuperDrive I tried to burn a DVD (SL) @ 8x, even if the DVD speed was 16x and it finalized it without writing any data on it.

It started the burning process from the finalization...

This night I'll try with Toast 6 or by creating a new user but i think I will have to bring it back to repair.

Yogs - what's the manufacturer of your replaced drive? (apple menu/about this mac/more info/disc burning)

Is it a Matshita? (specifically a MATSHITA DVD-R UJ-868)

Does anyone know if ALL the new unibody aluminum Macs have Matshitas?

no, the new one (on my MBP - early 2008) is:
HL-DT-STDVDRW-GSA-S10N

anyway i found that the problem seems to be Toast 9, i switched back to the old toast 6 and it worked fine, even if the max speed is 8x.

These evening i'll try with toast 8 borrowed from a friend, i want to understand if it's a SW or HW problem.

Tomorrow i will let you know how the tests are proceeding 🙂

I had a Mastsushita (Matshita) on my old PC and it is still working fine even if it's 13 years old, the quality of Matshita is very high. Plextor used to put Matshita mechanics into their CD/DVD recorders.

Message was edited by: Yogs

I picked up Toast 10 and it seems to work burning the +R DL disks most of the time, but I have still been unable to burn a -R DL disk at all. This is an improvement over my original situation, but it's certainly not what I would call reliable.

Verbatim 4x DVD-R DL blank discs are recognised by my late 2008 MacBook Pro. I haven't burned any yet.

Replying to myself, sigh.

Upgraded to Toast 10. Burning DL works fine.

Have not tried disk utility yet.

well, I downgraded from Toast 9 to Toast 8 and now at least I'm able to burn DVDs, I haven't yet tried with DVD DLs.

*************************
THERE ARE SOME BAD MATSHITA DRIVES OUT THERE -- CONFIRMED!

If you have a MATSHITA DVD-R UJ-868 (common in unibody macs) that's gone funky with Dual Layer DVD's then you may not want to torture yourself experimenting with various versions of Toast, various types of DL DVDs, etc. etc. etc.

Get Apple to replace your drive if you can!

My one-week old unibody MBP would not read any of dozens of Dual Layer DVD's I burned on my old 2007 MBP.

My local Apple Genius was kind enuff to order me a new drive, today he put it in.

Now I have a NEW Matshita UJ-868, same firmware revision (KA14), identical in every way to my last drive EXCEPT THIS ONE READS ALL my Dual Layer DVD's no problem at all!

I'm no scientist, but I think that's as close to an 'objective experiment' as you can get in this situation.

CLEARLY there are some Matshita drives shipping on brand new machines that are defective when it comes to handling dual layer DVDs.

(There may be defective optical drives from OTHER manufacturers as well, of course, but my experience does not confirm or deny that.....)

Good luck to everyone. May your Genius be a Compassionate One!


MacBook Pro unibody 2.53 GHz, 320 gig HD

i had my drive replaced at an apple store under applecare, but new one still doesn't work properly (at least with memorex). I have yet to try with verbatim. But even in apple store they were testing with memorex DL discs so they should work.