BURN TIME

[lfe]

I got an LG 8400b 40x12x40 burner and when i burn a full 80min cd, it takes about 10+ mins to burn at 40x with a tdk 40x cd-r.
And the recorder buffer level fluctuates b/w 95 and almost 15 all the time. Also in the task manager cpu graph the level goes up and down the same when im burning. Is this normal?
thx.

[Hardcoreruss]

I have a similar burner, to record the same file would take about half the time with buffer at 95-100. Are you doing anything else at the same time ?.

[flaninacupboard]

are you sure your media supports burning that fast? 10 mins for 80 mins is more like 8 speed......

[KTH]

Are you by chance using a add-on drive controller card? I tried running my CD-R/RW & DVD-R drives off a Promise Technologies add-on drive controller card and this really slowed down those drives when burning disc's. In fact the drive buffers were varying from 5% to 90% when burning a disc. Normally when I run these drives off the onboard controllers my buffer level usually stays within 89% to 95%. Apparently CD-R/RW & DVD-R/RW drives do not like being run off add-on drive controllers or maybe the drive controller I tried using was the problem, but this add-on controller worked well with hard drives. My suggestion is to try running your CD-R drive off your secondary on board drive controller if you are in fact currently running it off a add-on controller card.

[scottb721]

I burn 40 speed TDK's on my Lite-On 40x12x48x and a full 800Mb only takes 3mins.

[lfe]

No, its running off the board.
The cd-r's are TDK and it says upto 40x, and nero and roxio let me choose 40x. and i just tried a princo and the same thing happened.
The wierd thing is when i burn the same amount of data on a ritek cd-rw at 10x it finishes in ~6.5 mins with constant buffer b/w 95-100. But i can never remember this happening with princos or tdk's before.

[pacmania_2001]

I have the same problem with my MSI 40x12x40 burner. It fluctuates between 0% and 95% whilst burning a CD and has about the same times you are mentioning.

Be very interesting to know what causes it as my friend has the exact same burner and has way better burning speeds/times.

[flaninacupboard]

A thought has just occured to me, burning at up to 32X would work on an ordinary 33 drive, but faster than that needs a DMA66 or faster hard drive (or if you're going disc to disc, a DMA66 CD-ROM to read from)

[lfe]

Thanks for all the replies.
well, problem is fixed. I was very silly and forgot to check the most obvious thing. The secondary IDE channel was in PIO mode . I uninstalled and reinstalled and now its alright.
I burned 650MB of data onto the same TDK cdr at 32x, and the buffer didnt move off 98% and it finished in 3.5 mins .
I just cant believe i wasted my time burning 10 cd-r's in PIO mode .

[pacmania_2001]

This may sound niave but what is PIO mode and how can I see if my burner is using it?

Cheers.

[lfe]

Control panel >system >hardware tab >device manager >IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers >secondary IDE channel >advanced settings.

My cdrw drive is obviously secondary and my hard drive is primary.
Because it was in PIO mode i uninstalled the secondary IDE channel and the reinstalled by right clicking and choosing scan for hardware changes.
But im using Xp so thats how i did it.