Sony DRU-500A Speed Question

[Evil4blue]

Okay, I have a pretty weird question about the 500a. Actually it's more about it's cd-r recording speed. Sony says it's a 24x burner, but I can seem to get it to run any faster than about 6x normally. I've used both Nero and RecordNow DX and both yild similar results. It also depends what I'm recording. If I'm burnung an iso it seems to burn close to it's advertised sped, but if I'm burning a bunch of files, it is butt-slow. I vae an older 12x burner and it about 2 as fast. I haven't noticed any problem in dvd record mode, a full 4.5gig disk takes about 22 mins, on 2.5x certified media.

I have the drive in an external case, and I even thought maybe the drive wasn't getting enough power, but I tested the same set of files while in the external case and inside my computer, same results both ways. My cd-r media is generic, but it's certified to 40x and my 12x burner burns them at ful speed.

I'm out of ideas, anyone else see this happening to them. As long as the dvd burns at full speed, I'm okay, I'll just keep my 12x cdr for cd-r's. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Oh yeah, I actually have 2 500a's right now, both with the 1.0f firmware, both with the same problem.

[kitty]

I can't seem to get Nero Speed Test to work with 24x Imation CD-R media and my Sony :^( - maybe the drive isn't truly supported yet :^(

[Jester700]

I've burned at 16x with no problems in Nero 5.5.10. TDK 48x media.

[Evil4blue]

I have burned at what seems to be the correct speeds, but only cd images. I've backed-up some mp3's and some pictures and it's almost like using my very first cd burner (not really, I actually owned a 1x burner ). I think it might be all about the media, This burner is very picky at what it likes to burn on.

[kitty]

Maybe we need to start a media report for CD-R on this drive?

[donpedro]

My Circuit City 32x media burned 16x too.

[Evil4blue]

Well, so far I've tried:
GQ Brand 40x cd-r @ ~6x
Imation 16x cdr @ ~16x
Verbatim Datalife Plus @ ~24x

I'll try some other brands when I get a chance. Too bad I got about 85 disks ledt of the GQ brand...thank g, I still have my 12x burner.