A couple of months ago my DVD burner (Superdrive) stopped working, well not stopped pursay, more like stopped burning and read CDs and DVDs at an alarmingingly slow rate, and at times, not at all. Some of you may recognise the warning messages from Toast below.
Toast Error: Sense Key = HARDWARE ERROR Sense Code = 0x44, 0xD9 Internal Target Failure
Toast Error 2 : Sense Key = ILLEGAL REQUEST Sense Code : 0x21, 0x02 BUFFER UNDERUN
Now I read the forums, I asked around, I was even going to blast air into the slot loader with a compressor as recommended in some forum (don’t remember which one), but decided that it was a better way to start by picking up a 4 Euro Disc cleaner from my local newsagent instead. Dammit, it worked 
I’m not only burning at higher speeds than before, my bus speed has improved. At one stage I had used a USB2 burner to try and do my backups, but found that it was giving me just as many errors, I have no idea how Apple managed to tie the internal drive into the rest of the USB bus, and in my mind it seems implausible, but it’s managed to speed up now that the drive is dust free.
I came across quite a few people pointing fingers at Apple when their drives went wonky, I have to admit that I was going to start pointing too, however, in retrospect, the MacMini was in the room when I was assembling furniture, drilling holes in the wall, and even when I had the plasterers in another room. This just reaffirms my faith in Apple design and quality. To this day I still don’t know why Windows XP on my DELL Poweredge keeps spitting Blank DVDs back out at me, even on brand new drives.
Specs: Mac Mini 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB Ram MacOSX 10.6.2 Snow Leopard, Toast 10 Titanium. When evaluating the issue, I used multiple ways of recording, each having their own issues, but never actually burning a complete disc.
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