I came across an unusual dvd failure.

Customer says she can no longer write dvds from her video camera (it used to work… just plug in the camera to the PCs firewire port, and the cameras PC DVD writing software would start, and guide you through to burning a dvd.

Now, however, the cameras software would start, and then complain about there not being a valid disk in the drive.

I use the burning software on the PC, and it seems to write about 1GB of data onto a blank DVD. I then try reading it, and windows thinks for about 3 minutes, then says something about an invalid disk in the drive. I pop the DVD into the DVD-rom drive (PC has 2 optical drives), and I can read the newly-created DVD. Hmmm.

I place a CD into the “faulty drive”, and I can also read the contents.

At this stage, it seems clear that the “DVD reading laser” seems to be faulty.

Its the first time I’ve seen an optical drive, where only 1 mode stops working (usually, the whole drive breaks… from mechanical failure).

Oh well, I replace the drive with a new DVD-RW and everything is back to working order.