NEC 3520A Problem after install.

[mackgee]

Last night I replaced my old LG burner with a new NEC 3520A from Newegg. I connected it up as secondary master in the exact config as my old LG (secondary slave is my Maxtor 200GB). First boot Windows took about three minutes to boot (normally about a minute), and the drive wasn't even recognized. I rebooted, this time viewing the post screen, and the bios detected the drive. Then once in Windows it found the new drive, and it worked fine to burn my first DVD. Then this evening I started my machine again, and same problem; long boot time and no burner. Every time I reboot now I get a long boot time, and sometimes Windows detects the drive, sometimes not. It is detected by the bios for every boot however. Any help on how to fix the boot & detection problem would be greatly appreciated.

[doppletwo]

Is it set to Cable select or Master?

[mackgee]

Set to master

[mackgee]

Alright, I have solved my problem by switching the way my new burner was connected. I switched it with my LG combo drive so my new NEC was set to primary master with no slave attached. As stated this fixed the slow boot times, and Windows will recognize the drive every time, however I now have another problem.

When I burn a DVD the DVD's buffer "jumps" all over the place. It jumps from 100% down to 9%, back to 90%, down to 20% during the entire burn. Also the burn speed says it will burn 8x but it takes about 30 for a full burn. That ends up calculating to about 2x. Once again any help is appreciated.

[steve2713]

Sounds like you might be in PIO mode. If you search the forum there's alot of threads on the subject.

[mackgee]

I found where to change to DMA mode, but it is giving me many options:

Ultra DMA 2 - Ultra33
Ultra DMA 1
Ultra DMA 0
Multi-word DMA 2
Multi-work DMA 1
Multi-work DMA 0
PIO Mode

I tried selecting Ultra DMA 2 - Ultra33 and burning and I got a improvement in speed and the buffer stayed at 97% more often then before, but it still jumped from time to time. Especially towards the end of the burn. The total burn time is down to about 14 mins which is still only about 4x. Is Ultra DMA 2 - Ultra33 the correct choice or should I try another?

[steve2713]

I burn at 8x in Ultra DMA 2, so it seems something else may be effecting your burn speeds. Could be the cable, software conflict, ?

[mackgee]

It seems that it didn't like being on the same IDE cable as the hard drive. I moved it to the master the cable with my LG drive, and boot times are good and burning speed is 10-11 mins. Shame it only took me four hours of plugging cables to figure it out. I thank you all for your help.

[mattyboy]

Youre NEVER supposed to have a burner on the same IDE cable as a HDD.
....................NEVER!!!!

[handyguy]

Could be your media too. Get some that works with your writer.

"Youre NEVER supposed to have a burner on the same IDE cable as a HDD. "

Lots of people say the opposite but it works for me the way you state.

[Dano12]

I had the same problem with my sony burner. I found out it was my BIOS.
The secondary ide channel was set to off instead of auto detect.