Burning Problem

[dlb]

Hi hope someone can help.

Every time I try to burn a dvdr at x4 -r I get a burn error. I usually use Nero 5.5 but I am also getting the error with Recordnow. If I use a -rw disc the disc it seems to burn okay. I have been using the simulation mode. I am using Datawrite x4 -r yellow top.

I have just done a complete system restore and have limited software installed. I have just also installed a second hard drive which I was using to store all my movies on. The drive is a Seagate baracuda, 120 gb 7200 rpm. It has approximately 60 gig of movies stored on it currently.

I have changed the caching location in Nero to the second drive. Both hard drives are on the same ide channel. My dvd-rom and Sony burner are on the same channel.

Hope I have given enough information.

dlb.

[northcat_8]

DVD-RW's only burn at 1x .

If I were you I would give Decrypter a try. I am one of the "Nero DVD burning haters" I guess, don't get me wrong I love Nero and for CD's it is the one. But I've never had very good luck burning DVD's with Nero.

My next comment would be the media you are using. I burn at 4x using Decrypter but I only use RitekG04 media and I've never had any problems or failures to play.

[Li Wen Cheng]

Try to use B's Recorder GOLD5.

It will let you to burn el-cheapo DVD-Rs made by Longten, Princo ...

[garryheather]

If it's failing during the write simulation, then it's a throughput problem. The drives and your PC in general might be fast enough, but there are a number of factors that will slow it down, some of them appearing random.

For example, do you have any scheduled programs running in the background, such as disk defragmenters, download utilities, SMART monitoring, etc ?

Anything that takes the drives away from doing their thing or robbing a few extra processor cycles could be causing issues as you go for the faster burns.

And just for the record, I use Nero exclusively, and have yet to have a problem with it.

Oh yes - one point. IDE chains can not share access to data, so if you've got both drives on the same chain so it's say source on IDE channel 1 (Master) and your cache is IDE Channel 2 (Slave), then the computer can not do a "disk to disk" - it has to read a bit from one, then write it to 2, read a bit more from 1, and so on. If you can put it on another chain, a properly configured PC should be able to a high speed block transfer between the two with little processor intervention. Might be worth a try going (back) to that sort of configuration if possible.

[dlb]

Thanks for replies guys.

Update to the problem, I have defrag both hard disc twice and deleted off more than half the movies. Still getting a write error when I try to burn at more than x1.

I have burned a 100 or so discs with Nero previous to this error and never had any problems till now. I have also tried Record now and still get a error.

Thanks.

dlb.

[garryheather]

Ah, a thought (ouch !!).

Some people have reported that XP "forgets" or otherwise alters the drive's access methods at random. Instead of the drive working in UDMA mode for example, it goes to something riidiculous like floppy emulation PIO MODE 1 or the like.

Check in the control panel applet that the drive is being accessed correctly, and if not, remove it and the drive controller from the hardware list and reboot. XP with then detect it again and (should) get it right.

[dlb]

Well all seems to be okay now.

I have done a number of things which I think has solved the problem.

1. I checked all the connections from the hard disc and optical drives to the motherboard. For some reason when I run the recovery program, when the second hard disc is connected the recovery program installs everything to the second hard disc instead of the c: drive.

2. In device manager I removed the device from the hardware manager and re-booted the pc.

I think option 2 was the make or break and solved the problem. Have burned 2 discs -R at x4, both went 100% and play okay on stand-alone.

Garryheather - can you please explain further how to check that the drive is being accessed properly.

Thanks guys for taking the time to answer.

dlb.

[garryheather]

Oh hell, that's taxing the memory at this time in the morning... I haven't had my first coffee yet, and I don't have an XP machine in front of me, but it goes something like this.

In the control panel applet, select the drive in question and select properties (it could be "information" or something along those lines, I can't remember the exact wording off the top of my head so please bear with me if I'm not 100% accurate on this).

One of the options in the properties dialogue box covers the addressing (or access) mode, which IIRC is a drop down box that shows what the drive is allegedly capable of and what you can select. Some people might have to roll back their settings for compatibility reasons, but generally speaking most people want the fastest one going that their machine can handle.

If the drive supports UDMA but is not using it, it will not be running at it's maximum speed and therefore you probably won't be feeding it data fast enough to get the job done.

Once you make a change, you will probably need to reboot to make the changes take effect.

By removing the device and rebooting, you're sort of making a "wake up call" to XP to look and see what a device is capable of - sort of reminding Plug and PRAY what it should be doing.

I have never come across this problem myself but I have seen other posts in the forums about this issue. Perhaps if one of those guys (or gals) is reading this and can confirm the procedure, they could post here and put us right if I've got any details wrong.

Anyway, glad to be of help, at least you've got a fix - even if it is only temporary !!

[Phil Thomas]

In XP ....Start/Control Panel/System/Hardware/Device Manager/IDE ATA ATAPI Controllers then for each channel right click/properties/advanced.

They should show DMA if Available & Ultra DMA Mode 2. If not change them accordingly. A re-boot is necessary to capture the new settings.

If new settings do not take, try removing the channels and let XP find/reinstall them, as already mentioned above.
Sometimes a little tweak in the System BIOS can help too, by changing the devices to Auto Detection.

Hope this helps