Can you enable DMA for an external DVD burner?

[Erasmus]

Hi everyone.

I just bought a new HP Mini running Windows XP Home Edition, and it's too small to have its own DVD drive, so the only way to burn DVDs with it is to buy a Lightscribe external USB DVD writer. From what I understand, DVD burning usually takes a while if you don't have DMA enabled. I want to burn DVDs with this, so I was wondering, does anyone know whether it's possible to enable DMA for the burner? I've already tried looking in Device Manager, but I don't see anything about it when I click on USB External DVD Writer, and it's obviously not going to be under IDE Devices, which is the one you normally click on to enable DMA. Nor do I see the option under any of the USB devices, and I've clicked every one of them. I was wondering if someone could please tell me whether this is at all possible. Thanks in advance.

[mh2360]

When using a USB device you are at the mercy of USB's highest transfer rate, which I believe is 60 megabytes per second for USB 2.0 and only around 1.5 megabytes for USB 1.0.

You should achieve some good burning speeds with USB 2.0, comparable with IDE.

Does your motherboard support USB 2.0?

[Erasmus]

It's a brand new computer, so I assumed it did, since most new computers do. The manual doesn't seem to say anything about it, it's pretty simple like "This is how to turn on your new computer." Is there another way to find out whether the motherboard supports it?

So far I've only burned one DVD with it, and that was the backup DVD that you make in case your computer crashes. It took about 40 minutes, but I thought that was because I hadn't yet enabled DMA, or because the Roxio program compresses stuff as it burns.

[MOVIEGEEK]

The answer is no, DMA is a relic of the IDE age.
The transfer speed is solely up to the controller on the external drive as long as you are using USB 2.0, the one I have max's out at 13MB/s(12x DVD).
BTW: use Imgburn to burn DVD's and don't verify.

[Erasmus]

It seems like you guys are both saying that it depends entirely on the speed of the USB device. There's one question I have about that.

I thought that the reason it takes so long to burn a DVD without DMA enabled is because all the data has to go through the CPU rather than being copied directly to the DVD. But mh2360 had said I could get comparable speeds with USB 2.0. But wouldn't the data still be going through the CPU then? Wouldn't I have to enable DMA for the USB device or something like that if I wanted it to go fast?

Thanks for all your help.

[MOVIEGEEK]

Use Nero CD-DVDSpeed to test the transfer rate.

[Erasmus]

Ah okay thanks.

[mh2360]

I thought that the reason it takes so long to burn a DVD without DMA enabled is because all the data has to go through the CPU rather than being copied directly to the DVD. But mh2360 had said I could get comparable speeds with USB 2.0. But wouldn't the data still be going through the CPU then? Wouldn't I have to enable DMA for the USB device or something like that if I wanted it to go fast?

Yes, the CPU is somewhat responsible for controlling the data flow, but as long as you run anything that chokes up the CPU while you are burning you should be fine.

[SingSing]

Bad news : The thru put on external USB 2.0 Driver is about half vs internal drive with DMA.

Good news : It is just 3~4 minutes longer for DVD burning like 16x. DVD burning spends about half of the time in burning the lead-in and lead-out. The other half is actually burning the contents, so you will talk no more than 25% extra time to burn a DVD. The different is even less if you are not burning a 100% full DVD.

[kpa]

You can not enable or disable DMA for drives connected via USB, the DMA setting with CD/DVD drives and hard disks applies to only IDE/ATA drives connected with a 40/80 wire ribbon cable. It's also equally meaningless with SATA CD/DVD drives and hard disks.