Writer not burning at 16x like it should

championjosh · Member Joined: 12 Mar 2005

I just bought a replacement dvd writer. It is the exact one like i had before, but brand new.

The max speed its letting me burn at is 8x....and it should burn at 16x

what could be the problem?

redwudz · Mod Neophyte Joined: 07 Sep 2002 Location: AZ, USA

What DVD media brand and speed are you using? The burner sets the speeds available from a burning strategy contained in the firmware of the drive for each media brand. It also does a 'Power Calibration' before each burn to test the media and set burning speeds and power levels.

And your burning software also has speed settings.

Lastly, your drive could have reverted to PIO mode instead of DMA, but that will cause even slower burns and reads, usually 2X.

But I would recommend trying a different brand of DVD media. Verbatim or Taiyo Yuden are both good.

budz · Posted: Feb 28, 2008 00:49

Your problem is MEMOREX makes crappy dvd burners. If you wanted a new external dvd burner you should've bought a SAMSUNG or PIONEER drive. What brand of DVD discs are you using? MEMOREX? TDK? OFFICE DEPOT? OFFICE MAX? Those are cheap crappy discs to use. Try using VERBATIM dvd media.

What's the firmware on that new external dvd burner? Maybe it needs the latest firmware in order to burn 16x. IMHO burning faster doesn't always mean it's better. Some dvd players aren't equipped to playback discs burned at 16x speed. Although with some of the dvd burners I have I had success w/16x speed burning on my SAMSUNG S203B drive and they playback fine on all of my standalone dvd players.

championjosh · Member Joined: 12 Mar 2005

i use TDK for right now. and its burning at 8x....

when i had my old burner(the same exact one) it was burning at 16x

jman98 · Member Joined: 08 Oct 2004 Location: Freedonia

budz's suggestion about the firmware is very likely the cause of this. Also, you don't say what software you are using, but unless it's ImgBurn, you may have to uninstall it and reinstall it if upgrading the firmware doesn't fix this.

oldandinthe way · Posted: Mar 01, 2008 17:31

For a start put one of your TDK blanks in the drive and use NeroInfo tool to determine what speeds the firmware for you drive has write strategies for. And the mediaID for the drive.

Redwudz has pointed out the information which would help you systematically find a source for the problem.

I don't know why Budz believes you have a memorex external burner, but if he is correct, you have a burner which may be made by any of several makers, some better than others. The exact model number will allow you to check the DVDwriter list on this site to find out who really makes your burner.

Are you absolutely certain you have the identical burner to the one you replaced. This is important because some older burners came with software which did not allow 16x burns, older internal burners used 40wire IDE cables, but many newer burners require 80 wire cables (some connectors different cable).

Did you install software which came with your new drive on your system? Some software needs to have you configure the maximum burn rate, and may burn at a slower speed than that in the write strategy. Some OEM versions of Nero 7 are configured with a max <16x

You need to do some homework and tell us more.

budz · Posted: Mar 01, 2008 18:20

[_chef_] · Member Joined: 13 Nov 2002 Location: Germany

Oh well, memoWrecks is back.

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