My Pioneer recorder has been giving me grief when recording from HDD to DVD. Setting up works fine until I get to Finalise, when the system freezes. The on screen display says Finalising, but it's actually frozen up. At one time I left it for 12 hours, but nothing happened. All other controls were locked up as well and refused to function. To regain control I had to crash out by switching power off at the mains. Does anyone have any thoughts?

Cyril Jones
Melbourne

had the same problem on my pioneer recorder,i've had to finally give up with mine as i've already replaced the dvd drive which fixed this problem and for the second time now i get the same error as you.
Blank discs and dvd drive are the two things to look at here,try first some top quality blank discs sony/verbatim/tdk anything good,that has a good chance of clearing the problem,if not then your drive is the next fault.
when i first got this error,i simply changed to sony dvds,the error returned,i then cleaned the lens on the dvd rewriter,followed by replacing the dvd rewriter myself.
Followed 6 months later by the apparent end of life of my recorder,i've had it 3 years and 3 years seems to be the lifeterm to expect from a good recorder.

my model is the DVR-433H-S which came out at the same time as yours in May 2005,yours has a larger hard drive and a few other features.

I've had mine about 2 years, it's done done this on me yet.

I'm not sure if this will fix the problem, but I had something similar a while ago and I now regularly use an 'air duster' (pressurised air in a can) to blow out any dust particles. Since I've done this I haven't had any problems of the type you describe.

I hope this helps!

My 630 records CCTV for 24 hours a day but I sometimes use it for making disc copies with the Disc Backup feature.

I had mine freeze too - although not in the same way as yours - I had to reboot it too.

However I also have a Pioneer 420 and it also had problems with burning certain discs and changing the brand sorted it all out.

I always used good quality brands and mainly Verbatim.

I started having problems despite using Verbatim on all my different recorders since 2002- the problem arose when using a Verbatim spindle of 100 discs- but subsequent Verbatim and TDK also had problems

I initially did think the recorder was dying but since I switched to Staples own brand discs both recorders never fail.

there may be a little dust on the fan at the back,but i can't see much dust getting in these units,mine was virtually dust free after more than two years use.
You can see it is vent free at the top.
http://www.world-import.com/images/dvr630hs_large.jpg
My pc had more dust in it after only a few months.Both units are only 4 feet apart in my house.The air vents are at the back.

i have a small feeling when the recorder gets to that last part,when the disc is completely written and finalise is your last step,that more power is required for the laser than needed for any of the writing before.
There is something special about that last step.As you could write discs all day when it is in that damaged state but it just won't let you finalise properly.