Go to the middle of the below page and find Sony DW-Q58A Dell firmware update...looks like it's version UDS2 for the Dell. Check it against your Dell/Sony burner. Also at the below link you have the option to use the Sony firmware update UYS4...I'm going to guess that's the latest update but Dell didn't update on their end.
John,
Thanks for the advice. I tried UYS2-4 and none of them matched the Sony DW-Q58A UDS2. Also checked the Dell service centre and found no firmware updates for the DVD burner.
This whole issue of optical media reliability seems to me to be confused by general software/hardware incompatibility and lack of perfect quality control of disc manufacture.
Nothing's perfect. It may well be the case if one buys only Verbatim discs that one will get fewer rejects. I suppose on average maybe 2-3% of all the discs I've bought over the years have turned out to be rejects at the recording stage for one reason or another. Is it worth paying perhaps double and triple the price to reduce that figure to, say 0.5%.
My experience has been, once a disc is successfully recorded it remains successfully recorded. The ones that contain errors don't seem to get worse with the passage of time (although I admit I have only one example of a faulty recording that I've kept for a number of years).
An issue which I think would be useful to focus on is the reliability of software verification procedures. Verifying the recording immediately after burning can take almost as long as the burning process. It's something that sometimes, when one is in a hurry, one might neglect to do. I wonder if anyone has had the experience of burning a disc and verifying it successfully only to find that the disc is unreadable a few days later (or a few weeks or months if you like).
I think it's a reasonable assumption that something that's designed to last 20, 30 or 50 years is not going to chemically destruct in a few weeks or even a year or two, provided it's stored and handled properly.
