Slow Burning Speeds

[Fozzee]

Hi
Just bought a liteon 8 x dvd burner for my laptop. My laptop is an Omnibook 6100 1gig P3 CPU, 512mb ram the writer will only burn DVDS at about 4x and 24x cds takes 7 mins., it says its burning at 8x in nero but it takes 13-15 mins to burn a dvd. If i select 4x and burn i am using around 325mb of ram. If i select 6x its the same, but it still burns at around 4x. If i select 8x it uses all the 512mb of memory. Is this normal for a latop i thought my specs would be ok for burning at 8x.
Also if i got a newer hard drive would this help? Does hard drive speed affect things?

Cheers

[redwudz]

The hard drive shouldn't have much effect on the speed of burning a DVD unless it is badly fragmented and has to search around for all the bits to transfer.

You are talking about a external burner? If so, what interface?

[Fozzee]

no an internal burner

[ROF]

The 6100 has a front loading multi-purpose bay which HP has limited to 4x DVD /24x CD burning capability. If you attempt to rip DVDs you will note it's even slower.

This is another reason why HP stands for Highly Prohibitive.

[Fozzee]

So are u saying whichever burner i put into this laptop will only work at 4x for dvd and 24 times for cd?

[ROF]

Correct. This multi-function bay allows you to add a swappable floppy, CD-RW, DVD, Hard drive or even an extra battery. It does limit you to 4x DVD burning and 24x CD burning capabilities. Quite a few after market DVD burners have problems being recognized in this port as well.

It's a good laptop with a strong battery life and nice looking screen, but it's rather expensive even if purchased used.

[Fozzee]

So I should be happy it's recognised and burning at 4x haha. I have found it to be a good laptop. I was considering taking back the burner but as its working I suppose i should cut my losses.
Cheers for your help I found very little on the net to help with this issue.

[Fozzee]

Also the bezel at the front of the dvd-rw is the same width as the unit. So one u screw on the HP surround to put it in the laptop theres a small gap either side once u have placed the drive in the laptop is this normal for replacement drives??