Samsung 52x Burner

[slinga]

I bought a Samsung 52x burner a while back. Using nero, it says it's burning at 52x (7,800 KB/sec).

Burning a 650 MB CD should take 650/7.8 = 83 seconds. A little over a minute.

Yet it takes me on average, 7-8 minutes to burn a full cd. What's going on?

The cdrs I'm using are Memorex 52x multispeed, I have tons of ram, great hard disk space, and I'm not using the machine while it's burning. Any suggestions to speed up burning?

 

[emazur]

if IDE isn't enabled that'll kill your burning speeds

 

[racketboy]

I never burn over 16X so I wouldn't know. Do you really need to burn a CD in a minute?

 

[Alexvrb]

Originally posted by emazur@Jun 5, 2004 @ 01:56 AM

if IDE isn't enabled that'll kill your burning speeds

You mean DMA, like as opposed to PIO mode. To check if you're using DMA for your disks (both HDs and CD drives), go into your device manager and look at the properties of your drives.

You'll never achieve perfect 52X speed, but you should be able to toast a CD (assuming you already have the source file(s) on your HD) in 2-3 mins. There are other factors involved like lead-in and lead-out, and the fact that you will only achieve full speed once it reaches the outside of the disc (the last part it burns, which is why it gradually picks up speed as it goes).

 

[Quakester2000]

Funny 83 seconds for a whole cd you must have the fastest cd recorder on this planet or something. :lol: A 48x speed writer writes a full cd in about 2mins 30 seconds - 2min 40 seconds a 52 is around 2minutes 20 or less.

Any writing over 16x usually uses CAV/P-CAV or Z-CAV (more info here http://www.cdrfaq.org/faq05.html#S5-22 ) but with the new recorders its usally CAV which is short for constant angular velocity it means the writing / reading speed starts at say 20x and works its way up to around 52x speed at the very end of the disc. So your not really getting 52x speed for the full disc as if you started at 52x writing at the start of the disc would literally explode in the drive as the disc would have to spun at super high speeds (27,500 RPM) which just isnt possible so any reading / writing usually starts at the inside of the disc at a slow RPM around 10,000 to 12,000 RPM the RPM (Around 21x Speed read / write) then drops down towards the outside of the disc while increasing writing / reading speed (up to 52x depending on reader / recorder). Data stored on the outside of the disc is read / written the fastest while data in the inner part of the disc is read / written much slower.

Also on newer cd writers the drive usually has a media speed list in the firmware which tells it how fast it can write to a certain type of disc so even if you set it at 52x write it will only write to a particular media at say 16x to make sure data is written correctly. On my Liteon Drive this is called Smart-Burn it can be turned off but it isnt recommended if you want your data on the CDR to be error free. Make sure you have Firmware updates as this can help with certain media. Always try different media as there are some real crappy brands out there.

DMA = Make sure DMA is enabled without this you will not be able to write to your discs at fast speeds.

(The only drives that wrote data at a constant rate through the whole disc are the ones from 1 - 16x speed for example the 16x drive started at 16x and finished at 16x same with the 8x or 12x)

 

[Alexvrb]

Quakester, of course. But it shouldn't take 7-8 mins, even if Memorex isn't the best media in the world. For his sake I hope it was just the lack of DMA.

 

[slinga]

I can't figure out how to check if DMA is enabled.

I went to device manager-> right click on CD-rom drive and properties.

I see three tabs, one for driver, general, and one for properties. Nothing for DMA. The properties tab only has info about playing music from the cd-rom drive. My mobo not that old, 3 years I think. DMA has been around for way longer...

And yeah Rack, my problem is that burning is only marginally faster than my Yamaha 8x, I was hoping for atleast 5 minutes a CD.

 

[Alexvrb]

Looks like its a tad different in XP.

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/storage/IDE-DMA.mspx

Still very easy to check, and if DMA isn't enabled, this should fix your problems.

 

[Arakon]

another thing to keep in mind is that writing the leadin and leadout ALWAYS takes quite long.. so even a 100x burner would still take over 2-3 minutes simply cause of that.

8 mins is definately not right, tho.

 

[Alexvrb]

Originally posted by Arakon@Jun 10, 2004 @ 12:51 AM

another thing to keep in mind is that writing the leadin and leadout ALWAYS takes quite long.. so even a 100x burner would still take over 2-3 minutes simply cause of that.

8 mins is definately not right, tho.

Err, I dunno about that, a 100X burner would still have a pretty smokin RPM. 😉

 

[slinga]

Yep, Alexvrb was right. DMA was not enabled. It was on PIO what ever the hell that is. I enabled it, rebooted, and burned a full 800 megs in 2.54 minutes. Now that's a more like it 🙂

Thanks again guys.

 

[Alexvrb]

Very good! Anyway, PIO is an older way of transferring data to/from drives, that basically involved the CPU controlling the transfers. This involves not only limiting your speed to at best PIO mode 4, but is inefficient for other reasons such as extra bus traffic and eating up a ton of CPU cycles. It was replaced by bus mastering DMA (and later ultra DMA), which is much more efficient. I remember I got a big boost in performance when I switched my 3.2GB drive (in my old Packard Bell 166MMX) from PIO mode 4 to multiword DMA mode 2. Their transfer rate was identical, but it didn't constantly abuse the CPU.

It's funny, Ultra DMA uses the same basic premise as DDR memory did at a later date.