[kde-linux] K3b and no space left error

[Duncan]

Dale posted on Tue, 13 Apr 2010 20:31:12 -0500 as excerpted:

>> I don't use re-burnable media enough to have had the problem here,
>> but...
>>
>> 1) Try a manual erase step first, then see if it takes it.
>>    
> That fails as well.

If that fails, and...

>> 3) The RWs have a limited number of write cycles possible.  How many
>> times has this same disk been rewritten?
>>    
>>    
> Tried with new media, it failed too.

That too fails, then...

[reordering this and the below quoted paragraphs]

> I'm thinking hardware.  It just doesn't appear to be working with
> anything.  I'm going to order a new drive and see what happens.

Yeah, that could well be hardware.

New drives are reasonably cheap, last I checked (maybe they're even lower 
now?), $40 low end everyday price @ Fry's Electronics, $20-30 if you find 
a sale.

But, what I've found with the low-end drives at least, is that they do 
tend to go out of calibration after a few years and start burning coasters/
frisbees.  But usually the speeds are up and the prices down by then 
anyway, and at that price, it's not /too/ big a deal to just buy a new 
one, as long as you're not paying an arm and a leg to have someone else 
install it.

I've occasionally wondered if the double-or-triple-the-price ones would 
last longer.  They're certainly not rated any different, speed-wise, etc, 
and the burning protocols are pretty standard, so it can't be that.  But 
if a double-the-price lasts three times as long and a triple-the-price 
lasts 5-6 times as long, it could be argued to be worth it.  OTOH, as I 
said, in the intervening 2-3 years, speeds tend to have gotten better, or 
prices, or they've upgraded technology/capacity (from CD-burner to DVD-
burner, for instance, and in a couple years as prices come down, to Blu-
Ray, and with thumb-drive prices coming down, that'll probably take over 
at some point), so buying the cheap ones and then upgrading every few 
years is probably as cost effective in any case.

> Looks like it will be black tho.  By puter is going to look funny
> with a black drive in it.  The case is beige.   Oh well.

FWIW, a lot of them now come with two snap-on covers, a black one and a 
beige one.  It's not a big deal to change it out, especially when you're 
installing the thing already anyway.

But I don't generally bother anyway, as I've already got a black 4-drive-
in-3-bay hard drive enclosure (for the 4-spindle md/kernel RAID) in mine 
(cheap aluminum case beige full tower) as it is, and have holes drilled 
for additional fans for more air flow, etc.  I'm a guy and a geek.  I 
don't care what it /looks/ like, as long as it works well! =:^)

>> 4) You /could/ try using the command line tools directly.  Yes, it's
>> hairy trying to figure out all the options you want/need, but it is
>> possible.
>>
> He he he.  I'm sure that wouldn't work.  It would take me a long while
> to figure out if I was using the wrong options or if it was not working
> for some other reason.

LOL.  I hadn't thought of that, but yeah, I guess if you've not done it 
before and are more comfortable with the GUI, you could indeed end up 
typoing something, or otherwise getting the command wrong, and end up 
sitting there for hours playing with it, before you figure out whether 
it's the hardware or your command line that's the problem!  I've done that 
on a few things before, but I do generally figure it out in the end, and 
do take a bit of pride in being able to work thru to my own solutions even 
if I'm banging my head on the keyboard for a couple hours working it thru!

But, what I had in mind tho I guess I didn't really say it, was starting 
from the command lines K3B's log said it used.  Then you're not starting 
from scratch, at least.  That's what I'd do, checking the manpage to see 
what all the switches K3B was using meant and verifying whether they made 
sense to me or not -- basically double-checking that what k3b was doing on 
the back-end was at least sane.

In your case, since you've already tried the k3b stand-alone erase command 
and that didn't work, that's all I'd worry about.  That command should be 
reasonably simple, and if you can get it to do that correctly on the 
command line, then you know for sure that it's something strange going on 
with k3b (and you could compare the command that finally worked for you 
with the command it tried to use).

But... given that neither the erase nor a write to a new media seemed to 
work, AND given my own experience with the cheap burners going out of 
alignment or whatever and needing replaced every few years, at the cost of 
a new one these days, I agree, rather than wasting whole slews of time on 
this and probably ending up replacing it anyway, might as well just go for 
the replacement now and be done with it.

Or... as I mentioned above, just go for a thumb drive.  An 8 gig will 
surely take your 4-ish gig archive, and they're getting so cheap now 
they're putting them in multi-packs.  If you're doing a lot of burning, or 
if you're wanting a DVD-player compatible format for part of the burning 
you do, the lower cost of the optical media's something to think about, 
but if you primarily use it for updating that 4-gig archive, a thumb 
drive, or a couple of them to rotate, is probably going to be roughly 
comparable to what you'll spend on a new DVD-burner anyway.

Or if you want to be fancy, buy a USB-3 adapter card (Linux was pretty 
much first out of the gate with support for them, as Intel was working on 
it before the spec was even released), and a USB-3 external hard drive, 
and go to it! =:^)

Or settle for a 1 TB external USB-2 drive -- I bought one a few months ago 
for $80, store special at Fry's, pretty close to the pricewatch.com price 
as well.  Think of all the 4-ish gig archives you could do on THAT before 
you started overwriting! =:^)  And as long as you don't go dropping them 
or something, they're probably more reliable than DVDs as well, as they're 
sealed, so no dust to worry about.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman