Should I leave the PC alone when ripping or burning?

[UNiCRON]

In the past whenever I rip a DVD or burn to DVD, I've always waited until it's all done before using the PC for other things. I would like to surf the web (cable, somtimes dial-up), would this be okay? Would I get errors perhaps, if I do other tasks, while burnig/ripping?

Don't know if it matters, but here's my PC setup:

windows xp mce 2005
pentium D 2.8ghz
1gb ram
ati radeon x300 128mb

[cd090580]

While ripping you won't have any problems.
If you burn, you may get errors if your write datas to your harddisk (ie: downloading a big file).

[mats.hogberg]

...or otherwise cause longer disc activity, like loading big files in some other app, or starting big apps.

/Mats

[whitejremiah]

just looking at your hardware specs, you should probably be alright, in theory though, your best off leaving it alone on both...you may obtain slightly better speeds in both ripping and burning....that and there's less chance of an error occuring.

[sanjayk]

Well you may not experience anything amiss while ripping but you must leave the PC alone while burning. If you put too much load on the PC while burning, you may "rob" the burning application of CPU cycles which will cause errors while burining leading to faulty disks.

[mats.hogberg]

Like I said, it's not so much CPU cycles that matter (hell, we wrote CD's with 25 Mhz 486!), but HDD activity that matters to the burning process.
If the burner app can't get access to the data on the HDD when it wants, the buffers starts to dwindle. Empty buffers = a coaster.

/Mats

[UNiCRON]

Thank you to everyone for responding to my topic. After reading your inputs, it's a good idea to just play it safe and leave my PC alone while ripping/burning. Again, thanks.

[sanjayk]

... HDD activity that matters to the burning process....

Yes I agree, it matters more than CPU cycles.

[Prot]

I have a related question, then. I have two hard drives. The files I wish to burn reside on a seperate drive from the OS. Would surfing affect the burning in this case?

[GullyFoyle]

While ripping you won't have any problems.
If you burn, you may get errors if your write datas to your harddisk (ie: downloading a big file).

I thought everything was cached so burning while doing another activity was fine?
Thanks for clearing that up.
Also why wouldn't the same apply to a rip? Or burning from a second hdd while doing something on the first?

[MeDiCo_BrUjO]

With the computer I have, I burn two dvds at the same time at 4X each (I work a lot with video, like passing old VHS tapes to DVD, MiniDV to DVD, etc), and I work with all other apps or navigate as usual. I even play heavy games while doing it and so far all my burns are ok.
And I don't have THE computer, just a decent one.
I have three hard drives though and one of them is just for the images, that helps a lot.

[Wile_E]

With those specs, you should be able to do almost anything, while ripping, burning or capturing. This is why we have "burn-proof" and other buffers in the cd drives and in software like Nero.

I have an AMD64 3200+, 1GB, 7200RPM drives. I'm able to do all those things, and still play games like Diablo 2 at the same time. I capture with WinDV, which has never dropped any frames! Nero can sometimes be a CPU hog though, so maybe while burning you should not do much.