[TriLUG] OT: dual-layer blank failure rate

[Brian Henning]

Hi Gang,
  Just wondering if anyone else has seen a depressingly high 
failure-rate for blank dual-layer DVDs.  For me, it seems like a good 
40-50% of my blank discs crap out during burn at the layer switch; 
growisofs says ":-( write failed: Input/output error" at 49.6% 
completion.  (It's so close to 50% is why I suspect something going 
wrong at the layer switch).

Or is it something I'm doing wrong?  Most often I'm burning single-layer 
media, either CD or DVD-RW.  Is there something I need to do to tell the 
hardware to expect to have to do a layer switch?  I sort of expected the 
drive to figure that out on its own.

My growisofs command is thus:
growisofs -Z /dev/dvdrw=dual-layer.ext2

where dual-layer.ext2 is a ext2-formatted 8.0GB loopback file I use as a 
staging area for creating backups and such.  When it doesn't crap out at 
49.6%, it works fine, so it makes it difficult to figure out if I'm 
doing something wrong.

Cheers,
~Brian
-- 
----------------
Brian A. Henning
strutmasters.com
336.597.2397x238
----------------