Burner Slowdown

[Mitchum22]

Hello, All.

About a week ago, my DVD burner drive -- an NEC 3540 -- slowed to a crawl. Normally, it was efficiently burning at a 12X/16X range. An average DVDFab rip, for example, would take 8 or 9 minutes. Now, it takes 50 to 60. I did not install or uninstall any new hardware or software.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

[budz]

check if drive is in DMA mode.

[kdogg]

I experienced the same slowdown on my Sony DVD burner back in December. I lived with it until early May.

Googling for advice I found the DMA advice, which did not seem to work, though I may not have implemented it properly.

I then discovered my Sony burner was a re-branded LITE-ON_DVDRW_SHW-160P6S. Lite-on had updated the firmware since I bought the burner, but Sony had not. I flashed the newer firmware in (which turned my burner into a Lite-on as far as the computer knew) and for the last few weeks I've been delighted with the performance.

Then suddenly last night it slowed back down to the bad old speed.

For instance, I could rip CDs at 36X, and suddenly I'm back down at 12x. I burned a 3.7 Gig file this morning and it took 30 minutes instead of 8. And the latency has ballooned so that I can't listen to MP3's off the drive because each one starts slowly and feeds bits slowly.

I tried re-flashing. Didn't help. I checked for DMA settings. They were - except for a strange exception that I'll get to in a second, all set for DMA if available. MS advises to toggle the settings to PIO Mode, and then back to DMA. Did that.

Now here's the odd one, and may be the big clue. In the Secondary IDE channel properties the Transfer Mode for Device 1 is set, in the drop-down menu to DMA if available. But the box that lists the current transfer mode box says PIO mode.

I really don't know the difference between Primary and Secondary IDE channels and the like, so I have no idea if this is relevant or not.

Clearly lots of people are getting these slowdowns. Anybody have any thoughts about this, or ideas on how to return my drive to its high speed?

[kdogg]

I found the solution to the problem I outlined above at

http://searchwincomputing.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid68_gci1196457,00.html

Since DVD burner slowdowns are clearly a common problem, it's worth posting this info.

The problem is that if the drive has trouble accessing a disk (say because it is damaged or very old) more than six times, it resets the drive so that it can only be used in PIO mode, not DMA. PIO mode required that all bits go through the CPU - hence the slowdown.

The bug in XP is that it doesn't automatically reset the drive to DMA, and it can't. The fix:
"My fix for the problem was to uninstall the IDE channel from the Device Manager and reboot. This forced the computer to redetect both the IDE channel and its associated devices, and reset their error counters."

The article also points to an MS Hotfix for the problem.

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=817472

[redwudz]

True, and MS has yet to come up with a easy fix, or a automatic reset. Uninstalling the IDE channel is easy enough and the OS will reinstall it on reboot. No damage to files will result.

A few times the channel will be reported as DMA and still be in PIO mode. Reinstalling it usually clears that up. If all this fails and you are still in PIO mode, then you may need to do some registry mods.

[Denvers Dawgs]

I too just suddenly having this slowdown problem. I have a samsung TS-652L (firmware 603 from HP). It is supposed to burn @ 16x. I haven't used it in awhile and it is only 6 months old. I just went to burn a verbatim mcc and it said 16x requested, 16x effective and DMA mode is disabled, but it is only writing at an avg of 1.12x? So this "IDE fix" All I need to do is unistall the drive in the Device manager, reboot and that may fix it?

[budz]

I too just suddenly having this slowdown problem. I have a samsung TS-652L (firmware 603 from HP). It is supposed to burn @ 16x. I haven't used it in awhile and it is only 6 months old. I just went to burn a verbatim mcc and it said 16x requested, 16x effective and DMA mode is disabled, but it is only writing at an avg of 1.12x? So this "IDE fix" All I need to do is unistall the drive in the Device manager, reboot and that may fix it?

yes that's all you need to do. make sure you're using a 80 conductor ide cable as well. most newer dvd burners must use it.

[Denvers Dawgs]

Sweet.....all's good again. I still mainly use my older benq 1620, over the TSST corp drive, because I've never had an issue yet with the BenQ, just decided to use the TSST today out fo the blue, and wham 35mins to burn 3.1GB.....CRAZY!! This thread should be sticky'd in the dvd writer forum

[GKar]

Problem was fixed with XP SP2, only those who are using SP1 and earlier are affected.

[redwudz]

Problem was fixed with XP SP2...

Not for any of my drives. All my systems are using SP2. Actually, MS doesn't consider it a 'problem', instead they will tell you it's a 'feature' to allow a drive to still keep working with a marginal quality disc. I have no argument with that, but the DMA mode should be reset on a reboot automatically. To me this is a long overdue mod for the Windows OS.

There are registry mods that 'desensitize' Windows to the 6 bad reads and revert problem, but I haven't tried one. Windows won't even inform you of the change to PIO mode. But if your optical drive is suddenly running slower and you had problems reading a disc previously, I would uninstall the channel first thing and reboot.

[Denvers Dawgs]

Problem was fixed with XP SP2, only those who are using SP1 and earlier are affected.

Yeah I have a 6 month old HP running SP2 and the problem occurred. . . so that theory is shot. Fixed now though with the unistall of the ide...

[kdogg]

I tried the registry mod supplied by Microsoft and it didn't do a thing. Every time I put a bad disk in my burner I have to uninstall the drive and reboot, and then all's well. This happens about once every three weeks or so, but I have some very old disks.

Here's the weird thing. When I try to rip an audio CD from around 1999, it's very iffy. Those guys are dying.

But I have some disks that are from 1997, and not only have they not deteriorated, but they rip as fast as a manufactured audio CD, which is not even true of very recent audio CDs.

Apparently the dyes got cheezier after 1998 or so.

[GKar]

Problem was fixed with XP SP2, only those who are using SP1 and earlier are affected.

Yeah I have a 6 month old HP running SP2 and the problem occurred. . . so that theory is shot. Fixed now though with the unistall of the ide...

Never run into this problem yet. I wonder if there's a common hardware issue here. Glad I'm not running a 6 month old HP.

[budz]

Problem was fixed with XP SP2, only those who are using SP1 and earlier are affected.

Yeah I have a 6 month old HP running SP2 and the problem occurred. . . so that theory is shot. Fixed now though with the unistall of the ide...

Never run into this problem yet. I wonder if there's a common hardware issue here. Glad I'm not running a 6 month old HP.

It's a common problem for any computer not just because it's a 6 month old HP. I've had this happen on my old socket 462 setup & my newest core2duo system.