Only able to burn at 1x with an 8x writer

[hdtv1]

Hello all,

I have an artec dvd burner for almost a month now. I was able to back up all of my dvds at 4x speed with Ritek G04 DVD-R 4x media. I backed up more than 100 DVDs with it and have no problems.

For the past two days, I am only able to burn at only 1x speed. Doesn't matter which softwares i used, Nero, roxio, dvddecrypter.

I have check and the firmware is up to date, and also have try some other media, but it's still only at 1x. I even unistall and reinstall the burning softwares. Also, restore the computer to the time that I remember it was able to burned at 4x. This is getting very annoying.

can anyone help me out with this problem?

Thank you.

[Capmaster]

Possible interface problem. Most newer burners will throttle back the burning speed depending on the PC interface's transfer rate. Older burners would just let the buffer run dry, then stop burning until it filled again.

Check what else is attached to that IDE channel and maybe try moving the burner to the other channel

[hdtv1]

Thank you for the answer Capmaster. There's only one device on this IDE channel, which is the burner. It is set to secondary master.

I also have notice this when burning with NERO. The buffer metter is keep going back and forth between 50% to 85%. Before, it is always buffered around 95 to 99%.

[babyboo]

I have NEVER been able to get my 12X Artec to burn beyond 4X regardless of media type or firmware. The 3 weeks I used it I burned approximately 20 coasters, 15 succesful burns at 2.4X and only 1 at 4X. Since I couldn't get my money back for it, it sits on a shelf in the closet.

[hdtv1]

sorry to hear that babyboo, you must have a bad one .

I hardly have any coaster with the artec and ritek g04 media. I think i had one bad one out of the 100 dvds that I backed up. I burned all of them at 4x since it is the max write speed of the ritek g04. The problem here is the speed at 1x. It is annoying as hell since it takes almost an hour to back up a disc

[cellmaniac]

Have you checked the IDE channel to see if it didn't inadvertantly get switched from DMA to PIO mode? Also, check to see if you're not running something in the background that is disc or cpu intensive. Have you scanned your computer for spyware?

Those are the things I think can throttle down your burning speeds or cause buffer under-runs/coasters.

[hdtv1]

cellmaniac,

That's exactly what happened. I just checked the IDE channel and Win XP sure did switched it to PIO mode. The CPU usage is right now go down to 5 to 10 percent and buffer is full with Nero and Roxio. So far, so good.

Thanks again everyone.

[smearbrick1]

WinXP will switch your IDE access mode to PIO automatically after it encounters 5 (I think) read errors. This happened to me alot when I was archiving my entire CD Collection.