Burn Question for DRU 500A

[philly33flyers]

Hello all. I recently purchased the 20 packs of TDK 4x +R disks from Target and I had them burning at 4x using firmware 1.0g. I have not upgraded the firmware to the latest version because this firmware was working perfectly fine with my RiData disks and Unbranded Ritek G03 as well as the new TDK's I purchased. Anyways, my system crashed recently and i reinstalled Windows XP and now my TDK's only burn at 2x. Is there anything that seems obvious that i should be doing besides upgrading the firmware that would let me burn at 4x again? Like i said everything was all perfect with the same firmware before the system crash and i'm following all the same procedures that i did before. Any help or insight into this problem would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance for the help.

[zeppsstteerr]

Did you switch motherboards, add an ultra ata controller card? Did you check your hardware configuration to make sure that DMA is on for the drive? When you burn do a control, alt, delete and bring up the task manager. When burning your CPU usage should be 1%-10% if it's like 80%-100% then you have an issue somewhere that will prevent you from burning at 4x

[aaaa]

there is a G firmware? just upgraded to F yesterday, lol

I could only burn at 2x with recordnow, not at all with
nero, etc.- this was a new motherboard and new xp install,

and it was
on a variety of pci66/100/tx2 cards,

moving it to single master on the mobo ide solved it,
just burned 6 dvds in the last hour and a half

[philly33flyers]

all the hardware is the same the only thing that is different and i don't know if this would make any difference so please let me know if it would. but instead of having the burner master and a hard drive as slave. I now have the burner as master and a dvd rom for ripping as slave, would this be a possible cause of the issue?? sounds as if that could be the only logical explanation. if anyone has any ideas please feel free to let me know

[beefgravy]

check to see if your secondary IDE channel is set to DMA not PIO.


you can do this by going into your device manager/under IDE|ATAPI Controllers/Secondary IDE channel/properties/Advanced settings.

if its set to PIO then chose DMA if available and then reboot.

[philly33flyers]

it's already set to dma...i've already checked this.

[JasonK]

there is a G firmware? just upgraded to F yesterday, lol

There is no F or G firmware. The firmwares have a number designation ending with a letter. Among others, there was a 1.0f, there was a 1.0g, and now there is a 2.0f. All can still be downloaded.

I had been using 1.0f, but I had a few problems with it:

RecordNow Max 4.5 would burn my Accu DVD-R 1x disks at 2X even if I tried to override with 1X. This would result in the disk being unplayable on any DVD player at about 2/3 the way through. Nero would let me choose 1x.

After burning an Accu DVD-R 1x at 1x, my DRU500A would sometimes not read the disk, although it would play ok in standalone players.

I had used Maxell DVD-R 2x and Maxell DVD+R disks which gave me NO problems burning at 2x or playing back on the DRU500 or standalone, these problems only occurred with a pack of 25 Accu DVD-Rs I had gotten.

Afer upgrading to the 2.0g firmware:

RecordNow Max 4.5 burns the Accu DVD-R 1x at 1x (only), so the disks play back. No need to use Nero now.

All my previous burned Accu DVD-R 1x disks burned at 1x play fine in my DRU500 now. And all the new Accu DVD-R 1x disks I burn play back fine in the DRU500 also. And they still play fine in standalone players.

I have 40 of those TDKs from Target, but am still finishing up the last of my Accus.