The Amazing....Compressed Air!
 

Sounds stupid, but let me tell you. I was having issues with my Pioneer DVR-109 drive the past week and a half. It would take 2 minutes to write the lead in and then only burn at 4x, no matter what the setting was set too. I tried everything. I uninstalled the controllers, the IDE Channels and verified DMA mode. I verified it was a master on the channel. I updated the Firmware to 1.58. I even pulled it out and reseated it just to be able to say I tried everything. Nothing seemed to fix the issue. Then I decided (wish I would of thought of this earlier) to blow out the inside of the drive itself. And guess what????? Good as new, back to burning at the proper speeds. I love my compressed air.