[Discuss] BlueRay DVD writers

[Murray Strome]

This is probably off topic, but I am very puzzled by some strange 
behaviour that has begun recently:

I have two LG DVD BlueRay DVD writers, one is IDE the other is SATA.

If I place a DVD-RW disk in the IDE device, it sits there with the blue 
LED flashing and never recognizes the disk.  When I place it in the SATA 
device, it is recognized and I can play the disk, or extract the video 
OK with ffmpeg.

If I place a blank DVD-R or DVD+R in the SATA device, it sometimes 
recognizes the blank DVD (not always), but if I try to write to it, the 
write fails (nothing is actually recorded on it).  When I place the 
blank DVD in the IDE device, it is recognized properly and I can write 
to it OK.

This just started recently, and since the computer is dual boot, I have 
tried it in both Windows 7 and Ubuntu 14.04 with the same results. I 
have checked the cables and they are all firmly connected.

Any idea why this should happen (other than both drives have failed but 
in a different way for each)?  I have not tried the drives in other 
computers, but thought I would check with the group first to see if 
anyone has any other ideas on how to figure out what might be going on.

Murray