Lightscribe overheating?

plutoniumman

New Member
Hello everyone

I have a lightscrube drive that seems to work erratically. (Burning lightscribe labels is erratic, DVDs/CDs/BluRays burn just fine continuously even without cooling) After the drive has been idle for a bit, I can sometimes write the label to the disc. (So far 98% fail chance when trying to burn a label after one other, 66% fail chance after being idle for 10 minutes or more) Some-what frequently I come across a disc which will not print the label for anything, but as soon as I put a different disc in, it happily burns away.

Could it be that I have a defective batch of discs? (Again?)
Could it be the external enclosure isn't providing enough airflow? (Aluminum case with fan)
Is it possible that lightscribe drives just aren't meant for burning more than one label within ten minutes?
Is lightscribe technology just under developed?
Do I just need to put a heat sync on my laser? (lol)

If any one could come up with a few suggestions or any thing, that'd be great :D


Here's what I got:
LG GGW-H20L
Mac OS (10.6 & 10.5 on another comp)
Roxio Toast 10 Titanium
 
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Lightscribe is just a gimmick. It's useless and underdeveloped. why wait 10 minutes for a single colour label when you can just write on them with a marker? it takes 10 seconds.
 
I'm thinking some of the later LightScribe drives could use shades of gray. If not, I know there's a clone out there of Lightscribe by some other company that can... I think it'd be nice for some things to look more professional. But the best way is to get the white/printable disks and a printer capable of printing on them.

Anyway, back to the question... I don't know a tremendous amount about lightscribe because I've never used it (though my drive is capable :P). How's the enclosure/exhaust feel? Is it very warm? I know some older DVD-Burners had little fans on the drives themselves, so some can get fairly warm... How about opening the case (if it won't void a warranty or something) and seeing if it works better with a bit more air flow.
 
Lightscribe is just a gimmick. It's useless and underdeveloped. why wait 10 minutes for a single colour label when you can just write on them with a marker? it takes 10 seconds.

If you burn a simple label it does it in ~2 minutes.
I often burn software so I put info about it on the disc. (Example: Knoppix and cheatcodes) It's a lot cleaner than using my sloppy hand writing.

Though so far I totally agree it's under developed!



I'm thinking some of the later LightScribe drives could use shades of gray. If not, I know there's a clone out there of Lightscribe by some other company that can... I think it'd be nice for some things to look more professional. But the best way is to get the white/printable disks and a printer capable of printing on them.

Anyway, back to the question... I don't know a tremendous amount about lightscribe because I've never used it (though my drive is capable :P). How's the enclosure/exhaust feel? Is it very warm? I know some older DVD-Burners had little fans on the drives themselves, so some can get fairly warm... How about opening the case (if it won't void a warranty or something) and seeing if it works better with a bit more air flow.

I think you're talking about labelflash, which so far seems superior to lightscribe. Labelflash is kinda the opposite compared to lightscribe, because the discs are dark, and the 'printed' areas turn lighter, I think in about 200 different shades. This tech can also burn labels on the unused data sections of standard discs.
The only downside is this tech is for DVDs only. (Not sure about burning graphics to unused data sections)

About the issue, the exhaust is cold and the bottom of enclosure is a little warm. I can try taking it out of the case tomorrow.


EDIT: Come to think of it, it only gets warm after it's been copying an entire blu ray to HDD.
When burning lightscribes it's still cool. (The air vent, the case every thing. About to try it out of the enclosure now)
 
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Just got done trying it out of the enclosure. It feels like it gets slightly warm where the laser could be. But I got a feeling it's psychological.
In any case, trying this, I highly doubt it's overheating
 
I have an HP DVD burner with Lightscribe that works wonderfully. I often burn and label 5 or 6 disc at a time with no issues. The drive heat as well as the disc but that's pretty normal for burners.

In response to linkin 93 Lightscribe is not a gimmick or underdeveloped. It does burn labels in shades of grays and like all things it will get better in time. Remember dot matrix printers or the 1x CD burner? Yes you can just use a sharpie if you want but the labels don't look nearly as nice as the lightscribe labels do. HP even says the next gen lightscribe labels will burn faster and even with some color.
 
@ lawson_jl

Well I hope an HP drive would do it correctly, they're the ones that invented it :rolleyes:
Any way, what software and OS you using to burn the labels?
So far I can only think of the software being the culprit.
 
I use Nero Express Essentials 7 to burn my discs and lightscribe labels. I also use the built in WIndows 7 burning tools but as of yet Windows 7 doesn't burn lightscribe yet. Maybe in Windows 8.
 
check for compatability issues....it could be that you might have a problem with it or it might have a defect. it happens sometimes.
 
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