My first-ever scan: Good? Bad? Ugly?

[Ma_Jie]

Hi guys. Here's my first-ever scan on a disc, which I burned w/ my rebadged BenQ 1620.

Any comments?

THX,

MJ

[lordsmurf]

Not great. Burned too fast? Burner firmware? Two problems to consider here.

[steve2713]

It looks ok until those spikes in the last 500mb of PO errors. Those are strange spikes though, to have PI maxing out around 30 while the PO(PIF) maxes past 200 at the same spot on the disc is really odd, typically PI numbers will be alot higher than the corresponding PO numbers at a given spot on the disc, and just the opposite is happening near the edge of your test here.

Do a scan using Nero CD-DVD Speed and post that, I've sometimes had DVDInfoPro have wacky tests.

[budz]

as suggested do a scan with NERO CD-DVD SPEED...also post your scan at the BENQ 1620 FORUM....you'll get more comments from there than in this media forum......

[Ma_Jie]

Hi guys.

I'm doing a scan w/ Nero CD Speed right now (I'm on a diff PC atm).

lordsmurf: I think I might've neglected to change the burn speed from MAX to, say, 4x; but it never exceeded 0.8x during the burn. Weird, huh?

Oh, and I have the G7P9 firmware.

- MJ

[steve2713]

uh, never exceeded .8x? So did your burn take about an hour then? If so, sounds like your drive doesn't have DMA enabled, like it's in PIO mode. You can change this under your system settings.

edit: to check if DMA is enabled, go to your control panel-system-hardware tab-device manager-IDE channels. Look under all of your IDE channels, they should all have DMA enabled.

[Ma_Jie]

Hi.

My HDDs are in PIO mode, and I know they shouldn't be -- but I can't seem to change them. My burner is listed as DMA Multi-Word...and was before when I burned the disc; my shitty CDRW is still PIO though.

Do I need new cables?

- MJ

EDIT: My burn took around 3 hours...it dropped to 0.2-0.3x for a while during the burn.

EDIT 2: I'm doing a Transfer Rate test in CD-DVD Speed, and it's saying current speed is about 0.94X....it's not even 50% done yet.

[steve2713]

It could be cables, could your MB BIOS, could need updated drives for your IDE controller, ....

Regardless, you need your hard drives to be in DMA mode as well, that is going to be a problem for your DVD burning as well.

3 hours, holy crap

I should have known something was wrong when I saw the time that it took to run your test - 36 minutes. It should take about half that.

[budz]

It could be cables, could your MB BIOS, could need updated drives for your IDE controller, ....

Regardless, you need your hard drives to be in DMA mode as well, that is going to be a problem for your DVD burning as well.

I already mentioned to him the hard drives need to be in DMA mode when he private messaged me several times.......he needs to do some reading with the links i provided to him.....better yet join the BENQ FORUM and post your problems there......there are many in that forum site that can help you out......

[steve2713]

Don't even bother, you've got bigger problems to deal with at this point than to bother with Transfer Rate tests (I meant for you to do a Quality test in CD Speed anyway, not a transfer rate test). Your computer must run like crap with the OS hard drive in PIO mode

[Ma_Jie]

Okay. I did a quality test; the scan is below.

I looked over the limks you sent me, Budz, and tried two of the methods -- uninstalling Sec. IDE Channel & IDE Controller -- but that did not change anything, unfortunately: my burner is still in DMA Multi-Word, and the other 3 drives are still PIO.

I'll look into mobo BIOS and the registry tomorrow.

- MJ

[steve2713]

That's a much more reasonable scan, and that shows why I don't use DVDInfoPro for testing discs - it seems VERY unpredictable and inaccurate. Good luck with your IDE controller(s).

[Ma_Jie]

Hi steve, budz. I fixed the problem!!! ^__^

I downloaded an updated driver for my IDE controller, and now my HDDs run at UDMA Mode 5 and Mode 4; and my BenQ is @ UDMA Mode 2 as is my Sony CDRW. ^_^

Thanks for all your help guys...and thanks for putting up w/ my newbie questions.

Cheers,

MJ

[steve2713]

That's great, I'm glad to hear you found a quick solution to the problem

[Ma_Jie]

Yeah, that turned all my drives into UDMA, but I think the overall crappiness of my PC is to blame for the slow burns. I'm only on a K7 850 MHZ, with 256 MB SDRAM PC133.

- MJ

[steve2713]

Nah, you should still be able to burn at 4x I'd think, which would be about a 15 minute burn. Have you tried another burn since you've resolved your problems?

[Ma_Jie]

Yeah.

This afternoon/early evening, or yesterday now, I did a burn of another disc, about 4.26 GB, and it averaged about 0.5X. Oddly, though, I can't scan it. I tried both Nero CD/DVD Speed and DVDInfo, and it just causes them to freeze; however, the disc, an episodic anime series, plays without a problem in my DVP 642.

- MJ

[steve2713]

It's time for a new computer.... :P

[budz]

congrats on getting your hds and burner in DMA MODE.....you may want to download ASPI drivers from the adaptec website....dunno if that will help or not.....as steve suggested it's time for a new computer......
your cpu speed is too slow for the rebadeged BENQ 1620 that you are not able to achieve the full performance of the drive.....

[Ma_Jie]

Hi guys. I DL'd ASPI 4.71, and I guess I'll install it now. I ran the check util, and it said ASPI not correctly installed -- could it be b/c I use a "modified" version of Win XP Pro -- so I'll install it and see if that has any effect.

BTW, below is my Nero CD Speed Scan for the 4.26 GB disc that I mentioned earlier. It scanned faster than the first one! ^_^

Cheers,

MJ



EDIT: I managed to install the ASPI, but when I run the ASPI check Util, it still says 2 parts of it are not installed. Does this matter?

[Ma_Jie]

Here's another scan....

- MJ

[yellowsugga]

Do you need a special burner to do these scans with nero or DVDinfo? KProbe needs Lite-on. Do these?

Also, what do Jitter, PI ..etc mean? I assume lower number the better.

[steve2713]

Not a great scan, but the disc should play fine.

yellowsugga, if you had your burner listed in your user profile, we could tell you whether your drive can be used to do the tests or not. Some brands such as Benq, Liteon, Plextor can do the tests. Several brands cannot. Put your info in your profile, that's why it is there.