Why does my computer burn so slowly???

[moe_b_disc]

Hi, folks.

I have 1 Gig of RAM and a 3500+ AMD Athlon 64 processor, and my computer takes 25 minutes to burn a homemade DVD. What's strange is that my old computer with no DVD burner or reader only took 22 minutes after attaching an external reader and an external writer via USB. The processor was way slower too. Any ideas? By the way - I'm using Sonic MyDVD. Can that have anything to do with the slow burn speed (lack of speed)?

Thanks,

S C O T T

[redwudz]

The first thing to check is if the burner is in PIO mode. That would slow it down considerably:

To check DMA/PIO mode within Windows:

Control Panel>System>Hardware>Device Manager>IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers.

From there, right click on one of the channels and choose 'Properties>Advanced Settings'. All drives should be DMA mode. The 'Current Transfer Mode' for Hard drives is usually DMA 4-6 and DVD burners DMA 2-4, DVD ROMs usually DMA 2. If you see any in PIO mode, that can slow things down.

Changing them back may be easy or complicated. First see if you can change them in that window. If not, I usually uninstall the channel thats in PIO and let the OS reinstall it. This will usually take a reboot.

From there, if no luck, get back to us.

[mats.hogberg]

Generally, there are only 2 factors that determine burn speed - The writer max speed and the media max speed. The lowest of these two is what you'll get. The rest of your hardware is mostly irrelevant.

/Mats