cannot burn at maximum rated speed?

[ginxwois]

i'm using an optorite dd0203 that burns dvd-r at 4x, and ritek g04 dvd-r which is rated as 4x compatible in dvdinfo. i had a previouis problem of the disk being unrecognizable by anything after burning at 4x, so i decided to test out burning at 2x and everything came out fine. i just wanted to know why i'm unable to burn at 4x? i received this message in nero after determining maximum speed.

Can only write at 2x instead of 4x,

because speed of source data is too slow

how is it possible that the source data is too slow? the source data is on my hard disk. i used dvddecrypter on default settings to rip, and dvd2one on default to convert. thanks in advance.

[Roderz]

Just 1 question
How big is your HD, what speed is it and how full is it ?

[ginxwois]

i'm using 200gb wd 7200rpm 8mb cache. i'm ripping to a 90gb partition with 40gb free.

[Roderz]

The fact that the it says 'speed of source data is too slow' would lead me to think that your HD is either slow or very fragmented.
Considering you done a speed test I would say it's got to be a fragmentation problem (unless you got lots of other processes running aswell)
I got the same burner and have used same disc's and my 'dvd-work' HD is only 5200rpm and have not run into any speed probs, but I do shedule a defrag every 2 days using disckeeper 7

Try a defrag (or 2 if using windows defrag tool) and see if it's ok then.

[garryheather]

Also check for "hidden services" like utilities that run in the background like scheduled tasks, virus checkers examing every file, SMART disk monitoring, file sharing network clients... the list goes on. Anything that accesses your IDE chain slows it down slightly. They only have so much cache, and the heads can't be in two places at once.

[ginxwois]

well i've tried defrag with norton speed disk, and closed all neccessary programs and processes (which i don't have much of to begin with). i still can only burn at 2x. during the nero speed test, the read speed at the bottom of the screen fluctuates between 2.9x and 3x.

I got the same burner and have used same disc's

roderz: what firmware are you running? i'm using 2.17 which optorite pulled from the website. maybe it's a firmware issue?

[Phil Thomas]

Have you checked your DMA settings on your IDE Channels ?

[j-a-w]

You should really check that you have dma setup on your drive. Your OS may have changed it to pio mode on you. That would be a reason why you aren't getting the full capablities of your drive. If it's set to pio uninstall the drive through the device manager and restart. Let the drive be reinstall and see if it goes back to dma. This should help out some.

[cplevel42]

Not only check your DMA settings for your IDE channles(primary and secondary), but check to make sure that your DMA is set to auto in your system Bios.

[miki]

I think its the media. me too had the same problem. when i burn with nero and neodvd using the 4x media. there were no errors but nero burns it at 2x speed eventhough i set it to maximum burning speed. and here's what i got from neodvd when i use that same 4x media..
" cannot start recording at the selected speed because of the source drive limitations. would you like to continue at a suitable speed?"
I figured out only that its the media, because when i bought another brand (RitekG04) it burns at 4x

[Gurm]

He's USING Ritek G04's. ROFL.

-----------

1. Fragmentation.
2. DMA, DMA, DMA.

Your source drive just isn't fast enough. Why? Well, see above. But also, why is it partitioned? You DO know that partitioning HALVES the speed of the drive, yeah?

- Gurm

[Gurm]

And before anyone tries to flame me, it's TRUE, alright?

Let's say you make two partitions on a 120GB drive. 60GB each.

One gets your system and swap file, the other gets your "work space".

Every time a SINGLE BYTE is requested from the system drive (which is ... constantly when you're doing anything at all, since virtual memory is constantly refreshed) the head jumps all the way to the beginning of the drive and seeks up to the required data.

Now, let's say you're burning from the second partition. Every time a system request happens... the drive STOPS getting data from the second partition, jumps the head to the beginning, and gets the system data, then has to seek back to where you were.

All of a sudden your ultra-fast drive that was providing you with 50MB/sec. is providing you with... jack and sh!t. And Jack just left town.

See where I'm going with this? You either need two drives, or to unpartition. You cannot expect to get continual throughput off a secondary partition on your system drive, it just won't happen.

- Gurm

[garryheather]

... and if you've plonked the writer on the same IDE chain as that drive, you're doubly screwed because IDE does not support multi-channel transfer like SCSI does.

Trying to effectively get data across 3 drives on one chain can have quite a dramatic effect on throughput.

[Gurm]

BINGO.

You can have the best equipment in the world, but set it up wrong and you're SOL.

THIS is the reason so many people went with SCSI for so long.

- Gurm

[ginxwois]

well, i'm no computer whiz, so, i didn't really know the downsides of having partitions on my drive. i checked the dma settings on both ide channels and it did somehow change to pio mode so i just switched it back. it helped with the ripping speed in dvddecrypter as it is back to 4x, but nero's maximum read speed is still 3x. it's not a big deal i guess, burning at 2x is better than not burning at all. i'm usually pretty busy, but if i have time, i'll probably try to get rid of the partitions and see how it performs then. thanks for the help guys.