Whats the best/fasted UDMA mode for a DVD drive?

[DVantrease]

Trying to help speed up my DVD rips. My current DVD drive (Raite 108H) shows as 'Ultra DMA Mode 2'. Is this the best possible mode? I am using an 80-wire ide cable. Is there a newer/faster mode that would be worth upgrading the drive to?

[HillJack]

Unless your DVD drive is a 1000x reader, no. 33MB/sec is pretty fast already for a ROM drive.

Read http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/modesUDMA-c.html for more info.

[Mirror_Image]

It helps to RTFM; what do the specs say as far as a max transfer rate?

[DVantrease]

To clearify my question... UDMA-2 is the mode this drive supports, but it is like 2 years old. My question is, is there a newer, faster mode that new DVD drives support that would let them rip faster, or is UDMA-2 still the current 'standard'.

(Ive done everything I can think of to speed up this drive, as I cannot rip faster then 2x, and am considering replacing it)

[DVantrease]

Still looking for clarification on this.

[Akai Rounin]

Data Pumping...

Idunno if I can clear things up, but let's see if I can muddy 'em a bit...

Imagine you have a 2'-0" diameter pipe in a sewer with 2" of water flowing through it. Say you decide to rip out that pipe and replace it with a 16'-0" diameter pipe... but you still have only 2" of water flowing through it. Have you really improved your performance? No. Sure, you have increased your performance potential, but until someone finds a way to send more water through the pipe, that potential is wasted.

Much is the same with computers. There have been 33 MHz, 66 Mhz, 100 MHz, 133 MHz, 200 MHz, 266 MHz and 400 MHz bus speeds on motherboards. The problem is, those virtual "pipes" are only as fast as the slowest "pump" in the line. Back in the day, these were the tape or floppy disk drives, the sole means of long-term storage on PCs. More commonly now there are the hard drives and CD/DVD-ROM devices.

As far as I know, there is no existing CD or DVD drive that pumps data at a rate that could overcome current IDE or SCSI data paths. No matter how fast they are, their throughput is like a mere trickle in the 16'-0" diameter pipe. The bigger pipe can't make the water go faster on it's own. But, it can accept input from multiple sources more easily. So you can hook up more and more drives to pump data through the system. Or you can get a new, faster drive that pumps that trickle of data at a higher rate.

Basically, if you get an 80 GB 7200 rpm hard drive and a 16x DVD-ROM, you ~*might*~ improve your current performance. But no, you don't necessarily have to upgrade to ATA 133, RAID or SCSI. Drives are physical devices and none can keep up with what the solid state silicon and PCBs have to offer.

Unta Glebin Gloutin Globin,

Akai Rounin, The Cyber Sage

[DVantrease]

Thanks, Akai. I understand totally what you are saying. I'm one who, when it's time to upgrade a component, compares all the specs on the available models within my pricerange, not only against each other but also against what I currently have. Since my current DVD drive lists as 'Ultra DMA Mode 2', I just didn't want to spend my money on something equivalent if there was something better/faster available.