Disks Take Forever To Burn... and they are poor quality

[ulTRAX]

Over the past few days I've been having problems burning disks. Burn time at 4x has gone up from 15 minutes to an hour. While I'm burning... something is eating up tons of system resources so any other tasks, even simple typing, are affected. The disks are not of the usual high quality I'm used to. PIEs have gone up to 300 when they used to be no higher than 60-100... and PIFs that are usually 2 are spiking at 7.

Nothing odd shows up in Task Manager. Shrink is getting the bulk of the CPU usage... between 10-90%. I do wonder about why with 512megs of RAM Shrink needs 120mgs of virtual memory. Page File usage is about 430 megs.

Poking around in device manager I noticed I have a yellow exclamation sign on the XMASSCSI SCSI controller. That has to be a clue... but in trying to update the driver, I have no idea where to look. I've read that this might have something to do with Alcohol 120 but I haven't had that on my system for 18 months.

Any ideas?

[LT. Columbo]

is your dma on for your devices? or could you perform a system restore?

[ulTRAX]

is your dma on for your devices? or could you perform a system restore?

I know I checked DMA when I first started using Shrink.... but where is it again?

I've not yet tried a system restore yet. I always think of it when I'm in the middle of a project as I am now.

BTW.... it appears I still do have Alcohol 120 installed. It didn't show up in ADD/REMOVE.... and when I tried to uninstall from the Start/Programs menu it would not let me uninstall. I tried installing over it but that got an error and was rolled back.

[mastercontrol]

Go to your control panel, select "System", then "Hardware", then click "Device Manager". From there, go to "IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers" section and select the channel the DVD drive is on (should be the secondary channel). It's under the "Advanced Settings" tab. If it shows "PIO Mode", then you need to set it back to DMA.

[LT. Columbo]

http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=44808

[ulTRAX]

Go to your control panel, select "System", then "Hardware", then click "Device Manager". From there, go to "IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers" section and select the channel the DVD drive is on (should be the secondary channel). It's under the "Advanced Settings" tab. If it shows "PIO Mode", then you need to set it back to DMA.

Thanks.... under secondary IDE channel....

Device 0 was on POI mode and Current Transfer Mode = POI... seems DMA is not avialable when I switch it.

Device 1 was DMA if Available... Current Transfer Mode = ultra DMA Mode 4.

I have two DVD drives... an older DVD-ROM and a Sony DU710a.

[jmet]

Check your DMA settings - How ? do this -> Go to Control Panel> System> Hardware Tab> Device Manager> IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers> Right Click Primary IDE channel (and Secondary IDE channel after you finish with Primary)> Properties> Advanced Settings Tab> Transfer Mode or <a href="http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=101616">click here to learn.</a>

Do the above from both "Primary & Secondary IDE channels".

I (We) and you need to look at whats in both "Transfer Mode" and "Current Transfer Mode". Screen shot below is what I'm talking about.


You can also look here for some other solutions: http://sniptools.com/vault/getting-b...windows-xp.htm

If it is in "PIO" mode. Click the "Driver" tab, and uninstall the driver. Then reboot. Upon rebooting windows will automatically reinstall the driver and it should go back to "DMA" mode.

[ulTRAX]

If it is in "PIO" mode. Click the "Driver" tab, and uninstall the driver. Then reboot. Upon rebooting windows will automatically reinstall the driver and it should go back to "DMA" mode.

Thanks everyone... I uninstalled both the primary and secondary IDE Channels. Now none read PIO mode.

Primary is ultra DMA mode 5

and

Secondary... one is at DMA mode 3 and the other is DMA mode 4.

Checking a disk... it's encoding in about 15 minutes. Sounds about right.

Thanks again!!!


So how did I ever get into PIO mode in the first place? I've burned perhaps some 200 disks before having these problems.

[jm1647]

Getting errors when using the drive(s) will force it to finally go into PIO mode.

[jmet]

Congrats ulTRAX!

Every time windows encounters a "error" (error = trying to read a scratched up disc), it will step down 1 mode. (ie. DMA mode 4, then DMA mode 3, and so fourth until it hits PIO mode.)

[ulTRAX]

This has not only taken care of my burning problems....

Over the past few days it was taking aout 5 minutes to start up the PC.

Now it's back to it's normal 75-90 seconds.

So did anything I do affect the main hard drive?

[jmet]

Yes

Primary IDE channels is/are your hardrive/hardrives.

Secondary IDE channel is your CD-ROM/DVD-RW drives.

[mastercontrol]

Yes

Primary IDE channels is/are your hardrive/hardrives.

Secondary IDE channel is your CD-ROM/DVD-RW drives.

That's the way most systems are configured. It is possible to have a CD/DVD device on the primary channel along with a hard drive, likewise, you can have a hard drive on the secondary channel. If someone's building or upgrading a system, and they don't have a clue of what they're doing, they can end up attaching an optical drive to the primary channel, along with the hard drive.

Of course, it's not recommended to mix those two types of devices together on the same IDE channel, as the CD/DVD device will slow down the hard drive performance.

It is also possible to have 2 hard drives on the secondary channel as well. So while the configuration you mention applies to probably about 99% of users out there, but there are always exceptions to the rule (although if the OS is on an IDE hard drive, it'd have to be on the primary channel).