DVD Burner problem

[zinger5]

Having a pretty strange problem with my DVD burner. It's an LG GSA404B which had served me well in the past but now seems to have some problem with it's buffer.

When I try to burn things the device buffer wildly goes from 100% to 1% and the burn is extremely slow.

The actual quality of the burns seems fine but the whole system is slowed down when burning now.

(Ultra DMA is enabled so i doubt it's that).

Cheers,

Joe

 

[FarFarAway]

That always happens to me (the buffer thing) with my CD-RW.

Not the slowness thing tho.

Maybe an RMA??

Or maybe someone who knows more about DVD-RW's can step in

 

[JN]

When you next burn a disk, open up task manager, and look under the 'Processes' tab to see what is consuming the most memory/processor.

It sounds like something is slowing your machine right down which would normally cause a buffer underrun, but as your writer has underrun protection, it is just slowing the burning process down.

 

[zinger5]

Yeah i've checked the Task Manager.

Doesn't seem to matter what application i use to burn, it is always at very high CPU usage. It's an Athlon XP 3000 with 2GB Ram, which isn't top of the range or anything but it should still be ok to burn without maxxing out.

Cheers for the help folks.

Joe

 

[Dav0s]

so the burning program is at very high cpu usage?

what hdd do you have? maybe it cannot supply data fast enough to your cd-rw?

 

[zinger5]

hrm... could be the HDD i suppose. It's a standard IDE 120GB drive at 7200RPM so i wouldn't have thought it would cause problems, but perhaps it's on the way out? Not noticing any problems with intensive HDD tasks though.

I've noticed that installation of applications from the DVD drive is also very slow but installs from HDD are fine.

Cheers,

Joe

 

[FragTek]

hrm... could be the HDD i suppose. It's a standard IDE 120GB drive at 7200RPM so i wouldn't have thought it would cause problems, but perhaps it's on the way out? Not noticing any problems with intensive HDD tasks though.

I've noticed that installation of applications from the DVD drive is also very slow but installs from HDD are fine.

Cheers,

Joe

Sounds like you need to RMA or just buy yourself a new burner... HD shouldn't be effecting your burn as it can feed information to the buffer 100x faster than the burner can get it in to the disc.

If you're noticing sluggish installs and transfer speeds from your drive, that definately sounds like it's trying to make its way out the door. Luckily the cost of good burners has come down significantly, you should be able to pick up a nice new one for cheapness

 

[catch22]

What about a badly defragged HD? Reapply OS? Some excellent DVD burners out there check out the NEC - plenty of support though not from NEC

 

[zinger5]

Yeah, I think now's probably a good time to take out the old drive and replace it. Might look at the NEC or perhaps the Pioneer 110 - they always seem to be pretty solid drives.

Cheers for the help guys,

Joe

 

[FragTek]

Either would suit u very well!

 

[jm7162]

i had that problem with an nec dvd burner i had... i ended up buying a new burner and have never had the problem since... touch wood