burning software destroying optical drives one by one

I have been using disc juggler to burn cd images which worked good enough for a while. Eventually I got into a bad burn situation where, as far as I know, it wouldn't stop writing to the disc. I attempted to abort the burn via the software which didn't do anything at all. I then either popped the disc out, or it failed to pop out because it was stuck in some vicious burn cycle and ended up ctrl alt deleting the program. I believe I had to restart the computer and before windows loaded up I managed to get the disc out. Getting back into windows I can see the drive and all appears normal until I put any disc in. WICKED NOISES! Sounds like the plastic gears are stripped or are grinding, it will either do that right off the bat or make 4-8 weak disc spin up attempts and about halfway up the spin it'l just spin down and give up then go again, then proceeds with the awful noises, or it will alternate depending on how many times I try. That is the first drive.

Being the lazy **** I am I plug in my usb to ide dongle and attach a working cd-rw drive. All is well and I am afraid to even attempt a burn of any magnitude, eventually I get my courage up and success! 10 or so burns later another infinite burn loop. Another optical drive toasted, same exact symptoms in the aftermath, wicked grinding gear noises.

Ok I am pissed I go to my local thrift store and pickup a brand used dvdrw drive. Plug it in, read some discs, drives working fine. Third time is the charm right? No, another dead optical burner.... I recorded the sound from this one as it is pretty similar to the others. I was hoping a major geek could provide some background information as to the exact cause/point of failure (laser is forked so it just sends the laser head to whatever position and freaks out making the noise? or actual physical wear during an infinite burn?)

please excuse the ambient noise, eight dollar mic 1 foot from the computer
audio commentary : the disc has been inserted and has been clicking away for half a minute or so, I then eject the disc which you can hear, reinsert the disc and then you can hear the continuation of it struggling to read. this last drive is actually the quietest failure
http://www.filefactory.com/file/c03c115/n/failure_to_read.wma


obvious note : the 3 "destroyed" drives don't read any sort of media

thanks for reading

 

Has nothing to do with the software. Most likely you are using cheap media, or have used the drive so much, that you wear them out. You never stated what the manufacturer of the drives is, nor the same for the medai.

 

Well given I have never seen this in my lifetime of using burners. Having three drives rendered unable to read any sort of disc because of a single program, in the span of time which it happened. I just doubt it has something to do with wear\use\old age. Two of the drives were lite-on brand, of those two one was fairly old and the other only a year or two. The last one was a samsung dvd burner and I am not aware of its care and use, picked it up at my thrift store. Was flawless right up until I used that burning program, I have only ever tried to burn TDK CD-R80's.

I have also tested these burners on a seperate computer and they are indeed kaput with same symptoms. I just got a nice SATA dvd burner and I really don't wanna toast this one. I bet you money I could if I tried and it wouldn't be hard and this is a brand new drive.

 

Why use DiscJuggler anyways as it's just a demo unless you bought it. If all you do is burn images then the free ImgBurn works very well.