Ubuntu – How to fix “Power calibration error” when trying to burn DVD

burningdvd

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS is not being able to burn any file to a DVD.

Every time I try to burn anything, it shows an error window and gives this error while burning:

scsi error on write(786,16):[3 73 03] Power calibration error

How can I fix this?

Best Answer

your drive dislikes the medium. You will have to use a different media product or a different drive.

Regrettably the brand name on the box tells few about the real manufacturerer and the product inside. You will have to guess. A bold and significant change should be a switch from DVD-R[W] to DVD+R[W], resp. vice versa.

The error message text stems from libburn. The code [3 73 03] was reported to it by the DVD drive. The problem is not specific to the operating system. Ubuntu's Linux kernel was only the messenger between libburn and drive.

"Power calibration error" is the human readable text that is registered in the MMC specification for that code. MMC-5 has about power calibration: "3.1.53 Optimum Power Calibration [...] OPC is a procedure performed by an optical storage device to calibrate laser power. Values from this calibration are used for subsequent write operations."

I.e. the burner did a few test writes on the medium and was not satisfied with the results.

Have a nice day :)

Thomas

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Ubuntu – Brasero yields “SCSI error on write(1248864, 16)”

SCSI error on write(1248864, 16)

The drive refused to write a chunk of 32 kB after many other such operations have already succeeded. (Exactly 78054 write operations did work. That's 2.5 GB.)

The error message is supposed to be accompanied by some SCSI error code: 3 hex Numbers and their translation to human readable text. E.g.:

[3 0C 00] Write error

Whatever, since the drive already worked on that burn job without complaining, it is clearly a hardware problem. Drive and medium did not like each other any more. It is not a problem of burn software (in this case libburn, where i am the developer) or of input data (the ISO image).

If this happens once in a large number of burns, then i would count it as a particular bad medium. If this happens often and with media from different manufacturers then i would blame it on the drive. (Sometimes they go bad in their youth, sometimes they die slowly after years of service.)

Best Answer

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Ubuntu – Brasero yields “SCSI error on write(1248864, 16)”

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