CD Burn Error"4280" -- My Story and Happy Ending

First--a little background: Today I realized that it was two weeks since I backed up my iTunes folder. I'm planning to install a new (larger) secondary hard disk because I need more storage space. Since I need to get all files off my current backup drive, I didn't want to copy my iTunes folder to this drive. I decided to burn a backup DVD. My iTunes folder is too large to fit on one DVD so I knew I had to break things up. Trying to use the backup feature in iTunes proved frustrating so I resorted to my Roxio Easy Media Creator (ver. 9.0) program. Well this attempt wasn't going well either, but at least I was seeing some progress. I was annoyed that I had to copy each folder individually. This was very time consuming! But, I dutifully kept copying files/folders and placing them on the burn list for Roxio. All of a sudden I got a strange message box telling me to hold while my files WERE BEING MOVED! I admit--I panicked. I didn't want my files moved--I wanted them copied. So I quickly hit the cancel button and then my computer froze. After several control/alt/deletes I was able to restart my computer.

I timidly tried to open iTunes and to my horror I discovered a blank canvas! I immediately went to my iTunes folder to see what was still there. Fortunately my Music folder was still present and from a quick glance it seemed to be intact. Now I just needed to re-establish my library. The library file in my iTunes folder was blank. I needed my old one back. I did an iTunes knowledge base search and found out how to import a backup library file and within seconds I had my old iTunes up and running! WOW! This part worked great and I am very thankful; believe me, that it was so easy to reestablish my library.

Okay--I learned my lesson. If you buy new music or make major iTunes library changes BACK UP immediately. (I found room on an auxiliary hard drive and backed everything up again--forget the DVD option!)

Then I decided to burn CDs of all my recent iTunes store purchases so I would have a hard copy if something REALLY bad happened. That's when the trouble began....

I would try to burn a recently purchased album to CD and everything would appear to be working correctly, then a few seconds into the burning of the first song I would get a stop error and the infamous "4280" code.

I did a search of this error and tried a few of the remedies, but nothing worked. Finally, I decided to try to burn a CD in Roxio to see if another program could burn successfully. Well the Roxio attempt failed too, but the Roxio error message was much more helpful. It told me that the song list I was trying to burn could not be loaded into the buffer fast enough for a successful burn. This seemed very odd. I have a very fast machine and lots of memory. Something had to be jamming the works. So, I'm guessing that the aborted backup DVD I was trying to create was still somehow in the burn pipeline and I needed to flush this obstacle out.

Since two burning operations didn't work and I had no idea how to flush the buffer on my burner drive, I decided to just uninstall my DVD burner and reinstall it hoping that the problem would get fixed.

Once I successfully reinstalled my DVD burner, I again tried to burn a CD in iTunes. This time the project went a bit further and then I got a "4700" stop error. GRRRRR. (I still haven’t figured out what this error means—it’s very difficult to search the Apple “article” base.)

Well, I still thought Roxio was to blame for my problems, so I went back to Roxio and tried to burn a CD. After the DVD burner reinstallation, something got reset and I was successful! Now, I knew something was working right again.

Then, I went back to iTunes, tried a new playlist, crossed my fingers, and pushed the burn button again. This time everything worked just as it always has!!!! I have burnt several CDs--my goal is to get all my purchased music on a CD--and I haven't experienced any other errors.

My CONCLUSIONS:

1. Roxio somehow jammed up the CD burning protocol on my machine. By uninstalling/reinstalling the burner drive and then successfully burning a CD in Roxio the jam was eliminated.

2. The playlist I tried to use to burn my unsuccessful CD in iTunes somehow had “fatal errors” attached to it from this "jam" problem. By deleting this problem list and creating a new (identical) one I was able to start fresh.

Anyway this is a very long missive, I apologize. Maybe others who are experiencing similar burning problems can find some similarities in our stories and finally resolve the problem!