Dramatic sudden rip speed loss

[Nilfennasion]

Just recently, while ripping my DVDs for backup onto various DVD±Rs, I have found that my reader drive has lost speed badly. The speed in DVDDecrypter maxes out at 1.6X-speed or thereabouts, making rip times frustratingly long (by comparison, the GDR8163B I use would average at about 7X-speed before).

I have not installed anything other than Virusscan (McAfee) updates, so I do not know what the hang could be wrong. Suggestions would be very appreciated.

[guns1inger]

Checked the transfer method on the ide channel for the drive ? Has it slipped back to PIO ?

[Bob W]

Checked the transfer method on the ide channel for the drive ? Has it slipped back to PIO ?

Yeah that's what I was thinking the drive IDE channel is no longer in DMA mode.

[Nilfennasion]

I am fairly certain it has not, but I will check and make sure. Where do I find this setting again? (Memory like a sieve, I have.)

[Bob W]

In WinXP look in device manager under IDE/ATA controllers.

[Nilfennasion]

Incredibly, the secondary ATA channel's secondary port (I am paraphrasing a bit here) had been set to PIO. Without my knowledge (and noone else uses my computer). Talk about a worrying event. I will give the drive a go now and let you know if that solves the problem. Thank you.

Okay, now it appears I have a problem. I have changed the setting to DMA if available but its current transfer mode is still PIO.

[bits]

Nilfennasion wrote:

Incredibly, the secondary ATA channel's secondary port (I am paraphrasing a bit here) had been set to PIO. Without my knowledge (and noone else uses my computer). Talk about a worrying event. I will give the drive a go now and let you know if that solves the problem. Thank you.

I had something like happen to me recently. After googling I found out that there is something in XP that will change DMA to PIO if there are repeated failures on a HDD or a CD/DVD drive. BTW if you can not get it to stay set to DMA just delete the offending IDE channel and reboot. The system will re-install the deleted IDE and that should fix it.

[Nilfennasion]

Ah yes, good ol' Windows XP assuming it knows better than I do how I should set my DVD-ROM. Thank you for the hint, I am in the midst of executing it right now.

[guns1inger]

It only seems to affect drives on the secondary channel. My MB won't detect the DVD drive on the first boot, so I always get PIO mode first time. My choices are either reboot from the XP login screen before logging in, or use this little Dell utility http://ftp.us.dell.com/fixes/PIOtoDMA.exe which saves the whole delete and reboot bullsh&t. Only works for the secondary IDE channel, and it wil set everything on that channel to DMA Mode 2

[Nilfennasion]

Fortunately, this is the first time in over a thousand uses that I have had this problem with the drive, so I think I am safe to let this go. I seem to have the problem solved now, so thanks to all and sundry for your advice. I do not know where most of us hobbyists would be without this site.