CD-R trouble

[doc-z]

My Acer CD/RW 24x10x40x is behaving strangely.
When burning a CD, AudioCD or VideoCD it does this:
Read buffer 100%
Write buffer flux 80 - 98%
but after 50% burn time this happens
Read buffer drops down to 0% then jumps up to 100% again
Then write buffer goes from 98% - 0% and write light on the burner switches off, then goes up to 98% and down to 0% again and turns off, this goes on and on until the cd is done.

Alos when burning at any speed, it does not burn at the correct speed.
Nero reports "Successfully completed at 20x" but theese are the true times:
20 - 40 min : 2,7 - 5 mins (7 - 8 x)
40 - 60 min : 5,5 - 7,6 min (7 - 7,5x)
A full 80 min CD : 12 min (6,6x)

When writing Audioand Video CD's the music and video is really choppy and bad!

This shouldn't be right, I know some time goes away from writing the TOC and the Lead in and out, but theese times are ridiculous.

My PC is a 1,6ghz AMD Athlon, 256 MB Ram, 80 gig 7200 8MB cache HD
:P
Win 2000
:P
What could be causing this?
Hope anyone out there can help me )

[ckdexterhn1]

What brand of media are you using?

[doc-z]

I have tried theese brands with the same results:

Verbatim
Sony
Moore
SmartBuy
eProformance
Kodak
Ricoh
TDK
Nonames


Doc-z

[garryheather]

Sounds like something is giving your buffer underun something serious to think about... you haven't got something running in the background that thinks the PC is idle during a write, have you ?

I'm thinking a disk defragger, or an over zealous virus checker that is checking every single file while you're trying to write for example.

[Gazorgan]

Your laser changes intensity as it writes. Think about it, the disk spins, but as the laser moves out (writes inside to outside) it has to cover more area/RPM. Thus the laser has to step up the heat as it writes. If you get consistent failures at a certain percentage, your laser is overheating/shoring out.

Burning at a lower speed can alleviate this problem in the short run, but it may be your drive is dieing.