16x Sony CD Burner only burning at 4x 1

[lodown]

hi

i recently bought a 16x10x40 Sony Cd Burner from a friend. i use Nero 5.5.6.4 and have it set to 16 speed burn. And the CD Burner is set to the Secondary Master. However when i burn it takes around 20 minutes to burn 600mb from the hard drive. my old 2 speed yamaha used to take 40 mins for 600mb, so it is really only going at 4 speed.

has anyone had this problem? or know how i can fix it?

thanks

 

[Kocky]

Hello,

Be sure that the recordable discs U are using are suitable
for burning at 16 speed. If they only support 4 speed it will burn at this speed.

Also try to copy the full contents of the cd to the hard disk and copy from there. If this delivers a faster burn rate than your cd-rom drive is outdated.

It can also be possible that the cd you are trying to copy is bad. When this cd was burned at high speed (above 8 speed) the cd-rom drive will have trouble reading it and will force the cd-burner to burn at a lower speed.

Also be sure the the DMA option is enabled. This can be found in device manager. Click on your cd-writer and choose
properties. Here you'll see DMA. Be sure it is checked. If you have Windows 2000 than you will not see this option. Windows 2000 will enable DMA automaticly.

Good luck,

Pascal.

 

[lodown]

hi

thanks for you help

The Discs are 1 - 24 speed. even when i burn stuff straight from the hard drive it is still the slow speed. and i'm running windows 2000.

do you know of anything else it might be?

thanks

 

[Kocky]

Hello,

Some more tips.

It is possible that your hard-disk can not deliver enough
mb's per second. This might be due to the fact that it is an old and slow hard disk.

It is also possible that your hard-disk is fragmented very bad. Try defragmentating your hard-disk.

Have you already tried to make a one on one copy from cd-rom drive to cd-burner ? If it runs at higher speed it must be a hard-drive problem.

You should also check Sony's website if there is maybe a firmware upgrade.

Hope this might solve your problem.

Pascal.

P.S. What kind of system do you have ?

 

[lodown]

hi

Both the Hard Drives are 7200 hard drives, they have been fragmented recently.

CD to CD is around the same speed.

I had a look on Sony's site but couldn't find any updates, it is the CRX1611 model.

My system is a Duron 1000, 512mb Ram, 4gb Hard Drive and a 40gb Hard Drive, 40x CD Rom, 16x10x40 Burner running Windows 2000

btw when i was researching the problem last night i found a help forum message where a guy had the same burner and he could only get 8 speed out of it, but no one answered.

i have also updated to the latest nero, i might try some different software next.

Thanks again

Matthew

 

[lodown]

i am trying Roxio Easy CD Creator now, and it has the following

- Selected Write Speed 16x
- Actual Write Speed (This is flickering between 1x and 4x)

 

[cdogg]

A couple more suggestions...

First of all, you mention that both hard drives are 7200RPM drives. Are you sure? I don't think they made 4GB drives running at 7200RPM. So, if this drive uses ATA/33 or ATA/66, then the faster 40GB drive will be forced to run at the same speed if it's on the same IDE channel.

It shouldn't be the software, but now that you're in Easy CD, run some tests on the hard drives. You'll probably find that these tests aren't giving very fast results.

It's starting to seem like a DMA issue. In Windows 2000, you can't simply go into the CDROM's properties in Device Manager to find the DMA setting. Instead, go to the "hard disk controller" properties. Intel motherboard users might not see anything (DMA is enabled by default), but since you've got an AMD system, you might see the DMA setting. Make sure it's checked for the CD burner.


What's the Sony model?
~cdogg

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
- A. Einstein

 

[lodown]

Yep they are both 7200 speed.

How do i run the tests with Easy CD Creator?

I'll give the DMA setting a go now

The Sony Model is CRX1611 (16x10x40x)

 

[lodown]

I tried the DMA thing and it burnt 350mb from the hard drive in around 6 minutes. The 1st 25% was hovering around 10-16 speed, the middle 50% was around 5-10 speed and then the last 25% jumped back up t 10-16 speed. That DMA setting seemed to be the problem, thanks for your help. do i need to change it for the hard drives??

thanks

Matthew