Horrible Performance with Burner

[Guest]

I have a Sony Spressa 12x8x32x CDRW that is just driving me nuts. The fastest I can burn anything, be it files from the hard drive or a cd to cd copy, is 4x. I use high quality CDRs rated at 12x and higher, no luck.

I've tried both Sony's packaged writer software and Nero. If you burn at 6x with Nero, about half way through it reports that it has 'changed write speed due to media' and bumps speed down to 4x.

Here's the system:
Windows 2000
2x PIII 933mhz
Tyan Tiger 133 mobo
512 PC133 ram
Maxtor 27 gig as Primary Master
Sony Spressa as Primary Slave
W.D. 8 gig as Seconday Master
Creative Labs DVD-ROM as Secondary Slave

I'm using ATA100 rounded cables for all IDE connections

I'm a bit dismayed at the fact that I can render a 3 minute HiRes movie in 3D Studio Max faster than I can burn a CD.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

 

[upec]

Check SONY's web site for firmware update.

 

[Toejam31]

Hi!

From what I have been able to discover about the drive, these would be my recommendations:

You mentioned running Win2k. Have you installed the latest service pack? You should, at the very least, be running SP1 with this particular optical drive.

Next ... for best results, this drive should be the Secondary Master, and not sharing a cable with any other device.

You might consider replacing the ATA\100 cable with another, and see if this has any impact on the write speed. ATA\100 cables can cause errors when rounded or folded. Have you been seeing any atapi errors in the Event Log when running the drive?

Search for a file called scsi1hlp.vxd. This file has been known to cause recording errors with these drives. If you find it, rename the file extension to .old.

The drive needs to be PIO Mode 4, Multiword DMA Mode 2. On some BIOS's, you can manually set the PIO Mode for the drive. This is a ATA\UDMA66 speed. Have you enabled the correct DMA settings for the IDE controller in the Device Manager? How about the Busmastering ATA\100 storage drivers for the IDE controller?

Finally, here are a couple of links that you might find useful. One is the link to the drive specifications, and the other to a support page for the drive, with a testing utility.

<A HREF="http://www.storagebysony.com/products/crx160e-a1.html" target="_new">http://www.storagebysony.com/products/crx160e-a1.html</A>

<A HREF="http://sony.storagesupport.com/cdrw/crx160ea1dwn.htm" target="_new">http://sony.storagesupport.com/cdrw/crx160ea1dwn.htm</A>

Good luck!

Toejam31

P.S. I hate to say this, but as with many of the people who ask for help on this forum, you didn't really supply enough technical information. For instance, the version of the OS, the model number of the optical drive ... and considering that the problem drive is sharing a cable with a hard drive ... the model number of <i>that</i> drive would have been helpful. I'm assuming that the hard drive is ATA\100, because of the cables you are using ... but that's just a guess, without some way of determining the actual specifications. And if there are compatibility issues with the hardware ... that can be hard to ascertain if the facts at hand are vague.

The more information you can supply when asking for technical support ... the better. There is no such thing as overkill in this regard.

Just a comment in case you need further help, or if something causes you a problem in the future. Okay?

Let us know how it goes!

See ya ...

<font color=purple>My Rig:</font color=purple> <A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?rigid=6847" target="_new">http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?rigid=6847</A>