Hi!
I'm new here, but I have my laptop for about 6 months now. At first, everything was working fine, but lately my DVD RW drive started to give me headaches.
I have a VGN-FE21H with Sony DVD DW-G520A drive. The drive started to read and write very slow.
Max. read speed for CD or DVD was around 1,5 MB/s same with write speed (with buffer level jumping from 5 to 90%, using Nero).
After a couple of days searching the web, I managed to fix this "problem".
First thing I noticed was that everyone was telling ppl with similar problems to "go turn on the DMA mode on the IDE channel the drive was on" or "go update your firmware".
The problem was that no matter what I did, the drive still wasn't using the DMA mode.
Second problem was finding the darn firmware. On the Sony support, there are only MatSHITa and Pioneer FWs for my Vaio model, but it has a Sony drive (shame on you, Sony).
I finally found a firmware version GFS3 (original in my drive was GFS1) at:
ftp://ftp.vaio.sony.co.jp/pub/vaio/download/SP-011881-04/SOFOPD-01188104-UN.exe
Install is in Japanese only... Follow the same instructions that can be found on the support page.
Flashed my drive and it works fine now (DMA is on and everything, full read/write speed...).
In case anyone wants to try the same, check your drive's FW version
(you can do that with Nero Info Tool http://www.nero.com/nero6/eng/Info_Tool.html)
There are two versions, one being called GFS and the other GYS. Update with same version only (ex. GFS1 to GFS3 or GYS1 to GYS4).
You can find GYS4 here: http://download.opendrivers.com/drv/cd-rom/sony/GYS4WIN.EXE
In case you want to, you can DL this tool and backup your current firmware:
http://upload.cdfreaks.com/ftools/LtnFW.zip
DO ALL THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK.
Hope this helps someone.
P.S.: I already posted this in the DVD Problem Sticky thread, but since this has been troubling me for a while and it took me a lot of time to research and fix, I decided to post a new thread in case someone else may find it helpful (not everybody goes reading through 10+ pages). So Admins, delete this thread if you feel it's not needed.
