Is Pioneer DVR-109 a good burner?

[Webslinger]

thus, I'm guessing the writer overheats.

It's possible your system doesn't have good ventilation--or it's possible your drive is defective. You may wish to ensure your drive is being powered directly from your power supply--so that's not being shared with another device (i.e. don't have two molex connections on the same line). Also, overheating can be a sign of an inadequate powersupply. You may also want to check if you're slaving the drive to another device on the same channel and that you have DMA enabled for your drive (these last two normally just affect slow data transfers though).

also, I find that the drive reads discs slower than my dvd drive (pioneer) that I bought like 5 years ago.

The LG is not a fast ripper (riplock for DVD-Video . . . I think it's locked at 8x); that's probably normal. If you don't mind potentially voiding your warranty (and wrecking your drive), there's probably a hacked firmware out there that removes this limitation (but I'm not positive).

[ds2chan]

It's possible your system doesn't have good ventilation--or it's possible your drive is defective. You may wish to ensure your drive is being powered directly from your power supply--so that's not being shared with another device (i.e. don't have two molex connections on the same line). Also, overheating can be a sign of an inadequate powersupply. You may also want to check if you're slaving the drive to another device on the same channel and that you have DMA enabled for your drive (these last two normally just affect slow data transfers though).

I think my drive is ok. I can make backups no problem if I do them in batches of 3. Maybe I don't have enough ventilation.. my power supply should be good.. it's 300w (or is it 350?? I can't remember which).. I'm not sure what a molex connection is but the drive is being powered directly from my power supply..

maybe I didn't explain the problem I am having correctly.. the whole dvd will finish burning.. it's just that when I pop it into a player, the disc cannot be read near the end.. that is, if I backup a dvd of some episodes (eg one of the discs from season 1 of Baywatch) I cannot play the last episode..

The LG is not a fast ripper (riplock for DVD-Video . . . I think it's locked at 8x); that's probably normal. If you don't mind potentially voiding your warranty (and your drive), there's probably a hacked firmware out there that removes this limitation (but I'm not positive).

I'd rather not.. =P but thanks for the tip..

[Webslinger]

I'm not sure what a molex connection is but the drive is being powered directly from my power supply..

I'm just referring to the power connector going to your drive. Some wires have two molex connections on the same line (you can power two devices on the same wire; I suggest just powering your burner alone and see if that helps).

maybe I didn't explain the problem I am having correctly.. the whole dvd will finish burning.. it's just that when I pop it into a player, the disc cannot be read near the end.. that is, if I backup a dvd of some episodes (eg one of the discs from season 1 of Baywatch) I cannot play the last episode..

A bad burn . . .
Try using different/better media. It's entirely possible you're just running into a few crappy discs within the spindle you bought.

Depending on the media type, try writing at a lower speed. There are some jitter issues when writing to media at 16x with the LG4163b, and some dvd players are more forgiving than others during playback . . .