Solved CD/DVD drives can't see new DVD disks

[DarrylGF]

Both my DVD drives just started not seeing blank DVD's. One is a HP DVD writter 640C and the other a IDE-DVD DROM6216.
They both will see new :TDK CD-R80 disks. I have checked to see if the computer says they are working and yes the computer says they are good. They are both set to region 1 I have tried both Light Scribe disks and Sony DVD+R.
The computer is a older Dell running XP Pro with roughly 1.5 gig memory and on board video.

 

[bobafetthotmail]

This could be normal. Try to open up a disk burning program, and see if the program detects the disk correctly (max writing speed, size of storage memory it offers).

 

[DarrylGF]

Drives not seeing disks

By golly your right. I put a blank DVD in the drive, It showed ) bites and 0 space available and opened up "Easy Burner". Drug a file to be burnt and away it went. And to think I was going to toss all those disks!! Thought maybe I had put them near a magnetic field and caused a big upset in all them. Thanks a million. I know that won't fill your pockets but it is the best I can do.
Darryl

 

[bobafetthotmail]

Good to hear .
After all, XP by itself cannot write anything to those disks, so it's normal that it shows 0 byte available. Burning programs are another matter.

As for the magnetic thing, CDs and DVDs are a high tech version of gramphone disks (read and written by laser, the etches on their surface are not visible, but it's still a spinning disk with etches in it like a gramophone's). They have to be stored like a good wine (dark, fresh, not too much moisture), but that's it.

Hard drives are the ones that use magnetic platters so can be damaged/erased by BIG magnetic fields.

A good thing you can do if someone helped you (other than posting "thanks a billion" which is always welcome for us volunteers), is clicking on the balance on the top right of the helpful post to approve it.