Cannot Burn DVDs even with Snow Leopard

I am having the same issue. Burning worked fine prior to installing SL. I get the medium error message in Toast 10.0.2 and a source error in Disk Utilities. This is with the internal drive.

On a MacBook Pro, 15" 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo
MATSHITA DVD-R UJ-857

MacBook Pro Mac OS X (10.6.1) 2Ghz

My problem is identical.

I have a white late 2006 macbook. The issue started with leopard. When I upgraded to snow leopard, I was able to record about 20 dvds. Then it stopped working again. Not sure what's the issue.

Heard somewhere that this could be a ntfs-3g issue, so I removed it, to no luck. No idea what else I can try.

By the way, I can record dvds in linux on the same computer just fine.

same issue here on a Mac Pro, with both Toast 10 and Disk Utility under 10.6.1. Have tried a variety of media that worked fine under Leopard.

Message was edited by: nick_harambee

I'm seeing this too. This started after I upgraded to Snow Leopard from Tiger (I skipped Leopard). Burning from the Finder, iTunes and Toast all appear to finish burning but fail to play back on other computers or my car CD player. Both mp3 discs and audio discs.

Looks like there's a bug in there somewhere... Help a brother out Apple?

Just thought I'd chime in here again after my initial post further up the page..

Since I upgraded to Snow Leopard the Superdrive has not been writing or reading DVDs for me (at all, not even on boot in the boot manager) however I installed SL on a fresh SSD with my old Leopard install being completely self contained on an other HDD..

I just booted up Leopard, not Snow Leopard, and guess what: The Superdrive works as it should. Perfectly burning DVDs.

So I guess this is indeed related to the Snow Leopard installation and not just some hardware flaw in the Superdrive itself.

Anyway, I am thoroughly disappointed at Apple for not taking any notice or giving any kind of feedback or even acknowledgement of this issue existing.

Hopefully they will release a fix rather soon.

Quick update:

While it appeared that in Leopard the disc was burned successfully it ultimately didn't verify and could not be mounted/read by any system.

I ended up adding an old NEC ND3540 dvd-writer drive that I had left over from an old windows box into my mac pro secondary slot and this newly added drive works and burns great..

Maybe it is simply bad hardware after all.

Same issue here. I've tried Disk Utility as well as Burnz, Burn, and Simply Burns -- all with the same result. The burn appears to start and then quickly goes to "finishing...". The system reports that the laser can not calibrate to the media. I've used this MBP and the same media in the past (pre Snow Leopard). It's definitely a Snow Leopard introduced issue.

I'm using OS Leopard and I had the same problem about a year ago.
I did a search and I found the answer, but I can't remember all of it.
It's not a compatability issue or anything like that.
I remember a poster said that there was a file that was preventing any burning and once you removed
it, everything would be fine. He said just go to open your hard drive, open the Library folder,
open the LauchDaemon folder, and there was a file, it had the letters:
.exe
in the file. I don't remember exactly which file it was, but removing it worked like a charm.
I'm sorry I can't remember more, I wished I had saved the post. Hope this helps

An .exe in Mac OSX, yeah right!

Come on Apple! Fix this issue!

I cannot burn CDs or DVDs.

Yes, a .exe file in mac os sounds absurd!
I checked that LauchDaemon folder however, I have 3 files inside:

com.adobe.versioncueCS3.plist

com.rogueamoeba.hermes.plist

PACESupport.plist

Anything familiar to you?

i have the same problem, i can't burn dvd on snow leopard but i can burn cds with no problem

Jup, same here.
Burned a cd before snow leopard yesterday.
Today, with Snow, I can't burn anymore. Toast can't find the dvd recorder.

Modelaanduiding: MacPro1,1
Processornaam: Dual-Core Intel Xeon
Processorsnelheid: 2,66 GHz


OPTIARC DVD RW AD-7170A
Firmware-revisie: 1.N8
Verbindingstype: ATAPI
Ondersteuning voor branden: Ja (door Apple geleverde schijfeenheid)
Cache: 0 KB
Leest dvd's: Ja
Beschrijven cd's: -R, -RW
Beschrijven dvd's: -R, -RAM, -RW
Schrijfmethoden: CD-TAO, CD-SAO, CD-Raw, DVD-DAO

Supposedly 10.6.2 is coming out soon. I'm praying this will include a fix. If not, guess I'll backup / format / restore Snow Leopard. 😟

Just wasted two dvds trying to burn some photos to dvd. Apple needs to fix this issue right away!

Same here with lacie external dvd writer