Problems burning from my hard drive

[addictarmy]

I have a 250GB Western Digital HD that I use as my primary HD for storing data.
Recently, I’ve been having problems with the HD.

For instance, when I try to burn a disc (DVD or CD) using this HD as the source burn times take much longer.
I notice then when burning using either NERO or DVD Decrypter that the read buffer does not stay full anymore, and at times it is completely empty!

In NERO I’ve seen messages like:
“Can only write at 2x instead of 4x, because the speed of the source is too slow”

My DVD/CD devices all are using DMA mode, but it looks like my HD is using PIO.
Following is a snip from my NERO logs:
=== Scsi-Device-Map ===
DiskPeripheral : WDC WD1200JB-00EVA0 atapi Port 0 ID 0 DMA: On
CdRomPeripheral : _NEC DVD_RW ND-2510A atapi Port 3 ID 0 DMA: On
CdRomPeripheral : SONY CD-RW CRX195E1 atapi Port 3 ID 1 DMA: On
DiskPeripheral : WDC WD2500JB-32FUA0 15.0 ultra Port 4 ID 0 DMA: Off
DiskPeripheral : WDC WD2500JB-00FUA0 15.0 ultra Port 4 ID 2 DMA: Off
CdRomPeripheral : Generic DVD-ROM 1.0 d347prt Port 5 ID 0 DMA: Off
CdRomPeripheral : Generic DVD-ROM 1.0 d347prt Port 5 ID 1 DMA: Off

I don’t know if this is the issue, since I never examined the logs before.

The 250 GB Western Digital HD is connected to my machine via a PCI WinXP Promise Ultra133 TX2 (tm) IDE Controller.
Due to this, I can’t seem to access the individual HD via the IDE ATA/ATAPTI Controllers section from the device manager to set it to DMA.

I tried uninstalling the WinXP Promise Ultra133 TX2 (tm) IDE Controller from the device manager and reinstalling the device, and even tried changing the PCI slot.
Nothing seems to work.

I did verify though that I can burn from my main 120 GB HD (which according to NERO has DMA on) without issue.

I’ve also freed up over 100GB of space on the HD as well as defragment the HD.

I’m at a loss as to what my next steps should be.
Any help is much appreciated.

Thanks!

[normcar]

Check your DMA settings on your IDE controllers. Use the following, if you do not know how to set the DMA on your IDE controllers.

http://www.mrbass.org/dvdnewbie/

[addictarmy]

Check your DMA settings on your IDE controllers. Use the following, if you do not know how to set the DMA on your IDE controllers.

http://www.mrbass.org/dvdnewbie/

Unfortunately because the HD is on a PCI WinXP Promise Ultra133 TX2 (tm) IDE Controller I can’t seem to access the individual HD via the IDE ATA/ATAPTI Controllers section from the device manager to set it to DMA.

[normcar]

If setting your DMA does not show as a setting, then uninstall and install the latest IDE drivers for your card. For some ultra IDE cards, the DMA is set automatically. If this does not work, I would suggest you contact the IDE controllers company. For further info, please include the controller card, or Motherboard's name. Someone may have individual info about your controller.

[normcar]

Sorry, you posted the info before I hit enter.

Someone had another post a couple of days ago that said they had a MB setup setting that had to be set to DMA. I would suggest looking at all your MB settings for DMA or PIO settings.

[addictarmy]

I've checked the mobo bios (I have a Abit is7) and there is nothing there that I could find that affects my PCI card WinXP Promise Ultra133 TX2 (tm) IDE Controller.
And I also did try to uninstall all my primary, secondary, and my pci ide controller also, with no luck

[normcar]

Did you do any changes to the computer, or updates of any drivers or firmware of your DVD writer. You should indicate the DVD writer firmware version you are currently at, because someone may know of a problem with particular versions. Also did you use WDs program to check your disk for errors. It may be failing. I would also suggest you use the MB IDE controller to see if it is a problem with the HD. If it works on the MB IDE, then you know it is a problem with the controller card.

[addictarmy]

No upgrades at all.
My dvd buriner works just fine as I can test with my primary HD.
<_NEC DVD_RW ND-2510A> Version: 2.18

I haven't done the WD disk check, I'll try to find the disk and run that.

As far as running off of the mobo, yeah I was thinking about that too it's just that the wires are a mess and difficult to get into that position, but you are right that would help narrow it down.

[stiltman]

deleted

[addictarmy]

I finally resolved my problem
Don’t know what happened, but let me walk you through my steps and my findings.

Based on several people’s suggestion that the problem was that the HD was not in DMA mode I tried to research how to change this. Googled for days could not find anything so I switched my setup for my HD to just run off my mobos ide channel. Now it say’s it’s in DMA mode but I still have the same problem as before and my read and device buffers don’t stay full.

So I try the registry hack, uninstalling the IDE device from the device manager, and also install XP sp2. None of these do the trick, UG!

So know I think maybe something is wrong with my WD HD. So I run a Windows Check Disk, Defragment my HD again, did a virus scan with updated defs, ran WD Data Diagnostic Tools, and bought new rounded IDE cables just in case. Still not working!

Then while searching the boards for a possible solution I ran across http://pcpitstop.com/. They do an online check of your system and determine the health of your machine. One test they run measures your HDs uncached disk speed. For all my HD’s I was getting around 50 MB/s, but for my 250GB WD HD it was around 15 MB/s. Eureka, looks like that is the problem but what is causing it? Their site also mentioned that maybe it might no be running in DMA mode, but I tried all the tips and tricks already so I knew that wasn’t the case.

So then I figured oh well let me just start fresh, so I removed all my data off of the HD. Ran WD Data Lifeguard tools to completely wipe out the hard drive and write 0s. Destroyed and recreated my primary partition. Then I reran pcpitstop’s test and low and behold my HDs uncached disk speed was now 55 MB/s. Looks promising!

Tried burning a couple disks, SUCCESS
Moved the HD back to the PCI IDE Controller (still says DMA mode is off in the Nero logs), burned a couple more discs, SUCCESS

Don’t know what happened to my HD, but it looks like it had nothing to do with DMA mode being on or off (at least in respect to what the Nero logs were saying).