Multiple DVD Burner Performance Problem

[Mercury]

Check the motherboard manual re the use of the IDE ports. On some of these
newer Intel boards with a lot of SATA ports (I am not familiar with them)
there is only 1 IDE mobo channel and it is there for Optical drives.

The old board would not be a P4P800 as they came with SATA.

As has been said, check DMA is running, check you are using 80 conductor
cables, check the 'channel flow' as indicated by the previous poster IE when
writing a DVD the system should be reading on one channel and writing to
another. Having 2 opticals on 1 IDE is OK as the interface speed is likely
to be way more than is needed. 17MB / Sec is not a lot for any of the
interfaces and thats about as fast as DVD's go AFAIK.

It could possible be file size related - are you writing a lot of tiny
files. This will slow things down enormously with Seeking, directory reads,
writes and soon. IO can drop to 3MB / Sec in these cases.

 

[Rod Speed]

NO IT DOES NO,

Fraid so.

BEEN THERE TRIED IT,

Have fun explaining how come plenty of us have tried it and its worked fine.

AND IF YOU DO SOME SEARCHES, ITS A WELL KNOW FACT..

There's plenty of pig ignorant drivel spewed by silly little
pig ignorant children on the web. It takes knowledge and
experience to separate the mindless pig ignorant drivel
from silly little pig ignorant children like you from fact.

Adaptec also sold its CD burning software, that has
nothing at all to do with SCSI, its now marked by Roxio.

Just another name adaptec uses, you silly little pig ignorant child.

Do some reading on IDE

Dont need to. Plenty of us have tried it and found it works fine.

then apologize to me..

Only in your pathetic little drug crazed childish little fantasyland, child.

 

[kriskirk]

Thanks for everyone's suggestions.

One thing that's interesting is that I get no performance problems when
reading multiple DVD's at once (e.g. using DVD Shrink or DVD
Decrypter). It's only when writing them using Nero, so perhaps it's
something to do with the way Nero is buffering the data?

If anything I would expect reading to be more of a problem since I get
speeds up to 12x sometimes (though on average it's around 8x).

If there were any hardware problems to do with the motherboard, cables,
or the way I've configured the drives, wouldn't the same problems exist
when copying DVD's to my HD as well?

 

[J. Clarke]

NO IT DOES NO, BEEN THERE TRIED IT, AND IF YOU DO SOME SEARCHES, ITS A
WELL KNOW FACT..

Maybe _you_ can't make it work.

Adaptec also sold its CD burning software, that has nothing at all to do
with SCSI, its now marked by Roxio.

???? Adaptec makes SCSI _hardware_.

Do some reading on IDE then apologize to me..

I apologize for mistaking you with someone whose brains were of sufficient
mass that if they were made of antimatter he might be able to achieve a
detonation of adequate magnitude to blow his nose.

 

[kriskirk]

So what is the DMA status with both burners on

two separate internal IDE cables ? Bet its off.

XP can turn the DMA off if it decides that its
getting errors basically for safety of the data.

From Device Manager, under IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers, here are the

current transfer modes of the IDE Channels:

Primary IDE Channel
- Device 0 - Not Applicable
- Device 1 - Ultra DMA Mode 2
Primary IDE Channel
- Device 0 - Ultra DMA Mode 5
- Device 1 - Not Applicable
Secondary IDE Channel
- Device 0 - Not Applicable
- Device 1 - Not Applicable
Secondary IDE Channel
- Device 0 - Not Applicable
- Device 1 - Not Applicable

Why are there two sets of each channel? That makes 8 available devices,
yet I can only physically plug 4 devices in.

Also, given that both drives seem to show up under the Primary IDE
Channel, have I somehow plugged both DVD drives into the same
channel???

Thanks for your help.

 

[XP]

current transfer modes of the IDE Channels:

Primary IDE Channel
- Device 0 - Not Applicable
- Device 1 - Ultra DMA Mode 2
Primary IDE Channel
- Device 0 - Ultra DMA Mode 5
- Device 1 - Not Applicable
Secondary IDE Channel
- Device 0 - Not Applicable
- Device 1 - Not Applicable
Secondary IDE Channel
- Device 0 - Not Applicable
- Device 1 - Not Applicable

Why are there two sets of each channel? That makes 8 available devices,
yet I can only physically plug 4 devices in.

Also, given that both drives seem to show up under the Primary IDE
Channel, have I somehow plugged both DVD drives into the same
channel???

Thanks for your help.

You are listing the problem you have, both devices on the Same IDE PORT..

You have a set up problem, Primary has 2 ports 0 & 1

Secondary has 2 Ports 0 & 1


IDE ports can't stack commands, it has to wait for the command to finish, to
access the next drive on the same IDE port.

Its not a problem when both are on different IDE Ports.

The 2 meg Buffer is for Data not Commands.



One simple thing you can do, is to Uninstall both IDE controllers, (right
click uninstall ) then reboot and they will be reinstalled correctly by XP..

That is if you are using a Real OS, not the Lunatic one.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

I think that that is stretching it a bit.
Alot he just makes up.

Maybe _you_ can't make it work.


???? Adaptec makes SCSI _hardware_.


I apologize for mistaking you with someone whose brains were of sufficient
mass that if they were made of antimatter he might be able to achieve a
detonation of adequate magnitude to blow his nose.

The Brits sent their criminals to Australia.
What the hell did they sent to New Zealand?

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

Keep in mind that:

If you have your source hard drive and your DVDR on the same IDE cable, they
have to time-share the bus.

While reading from a HDD might take 10 ms (one revolution), writing the same
buffer to DVDR will take much longer.

Uh, no. Writes go to cache/buffer. The hardrive can read/transfer at full speed
until the burners buffer is full and then it has to wait until the buffer of the burner
is available again when the burner has finished burning the buffer contents to disk.

Since the driver is likely to send one HDD transaction per one DVDR transaction

(round-robin allotment),

As if that makes any difference.
Any transfer between devices is as fast as the slowest device.
(Either that or half the speed of the channel, minus overhead, whichever is slower)

your HDD speed will fall to about the same as your DVDR (say, 10 MB/s).

Yeah, that must be real bad.
Obviously you can burn at HD speed if you connect them to seperate channels. Not.
Keep those earth shattering comments coming, Alex.

 

[kriskirk]

One simple thing you can do, is to Uninstall both IDE controllers, (right
click uninstall ) then reboot and they will be reinstalled correctly by XP..

I tried that, and after I rebooted it added them all back in the same
way. I also tried putting DVD drives on the same cable, and this is it
shows now:

Primary IDE Channel
- Device 0 - Ultra DMA Mode 2
- Device 1 - Ultra DMA Mode 2
Primary IDE Channel
- Device 0 - Ultra DMA Mode 5
- Device 1 - Not Applicable
Secondary IDE Channel
- Device 0 - Not Applicable
- Device 1 - Not Applicable
Secondary IDE Channel
- Device 0 - Not Applicable
- Device 1 - Not Applicable

Now it appears there are 3 IDE devices when previously there were only
2!

I'm confused...

 

[EMB]

Primary IDE Channel
- Device 0 - Ultra DMA Mode 2
- Device 1 - Ultra DMA Mode 2
Primary IDE Channel
- Device 0 - Ultra DMA Mode 5
- Device 1 - Not Applicable
Secondary IDE Channel
- Device 0 - Not Applicable
- Device 1 - Not Applicable
Secondary IDE Channel
- Device 0 - Not Applicable
- Device 1 - Not Applicable

Now it appears there are 3 IDE devices when previously there were only
2!

I'm confused...

Your SATA controler isn't being 'spoofed' to look like a IDE controller
is it? That might cover the Mode 5 device and doubled up channels.

Have a look in Device Manager and see if the SATA controller is showing
under SCSI/RAID controllers (which IME is where it should be).

 

[kriskirk]

Your SATA controler isn't being 'spoofed' to look like a IDE controller
is it? That might cover the Mode 5 device and doubled up channels.

Have a look in Device Manager and see if the SATA controller is showing
under SCSI/RAID controllers (which IME is where it should be).

It shows the following:

D347PRT SCSI Controller
ITE IT8211 ATA/ATAPI Controller
Silicon Image SiI0680 ATA/133 Controller

If the SATA controller is being 'spoofed' to look like a IDE
controller, does that mean that the SATA drive is actually using the
IDE bus? Or that it looks like it's using the IDE bus to the OS?

 

[EMB]

If the SATA controller is being 'spoofed' to look like a IDE
controller, does that mean that the SATA drive is actually using the
IDE bus? Or that it looks like it's using the IDE bus to the OS?

That it may look like IDE to the OS.

 

[GraB]

I tried that, and after I rebooted it added them all back in the same
way. I also tried putting DVD drives on the same cable, and this is it
shows now:

Primary IDE Channel
- Device 0 - Ultra DMA Mode 2
- Device 1 - Ultra DMA Mode 2
Primary IDE Channel
- Device 0 - Ultra DMA Mode 5
- Device 1 - Not Applicable
Secondary IDE Channel
- Device 0 - Not Applicable
- Device 1 - Not Applicable
Secondary IDE Channel
- Device 0 - Not Applicable
- Device 1 - Not Applicable

Now it appears there are 3 IDE devices when previously there were only
2!

I'm confused...

Try it again in safe mode.

 

[XP]

I tried that, and after I rebooted it added them all back in the same
way. I also tried putting DVD drives on the same cable, and this is it
shows now:

Primary IDE Channel
- Device 0 - Ultra DMA Mode 2
- Device 1 - Ultra DMA Mode 2
Primary IDE Channel
- Device 0 - Ultra DMA Mode 5
- Device 1 - Not Applicable
Secondary IDE Channel
- Device 0 - Not Applicable
- Device 1 - Not Applicable
Secondary IDE Channel
- Device 0 - Not Applicable
- Device 1 - Not Applicable

Now it appears there are 3 IDE devices when previously there were only
2!

I'm confused...

Is this the add on IDE card you have in..?
3 Devices , 2 CD Drives and one HD..?

 

[kriskirk]

Is this the add on IDE card you have in..?

3 Devices , 2 CD Drives and one HD..?

Yeah I guess so. But how come originally there were 2 devices in Ultra
DMA mode and now that both DVD drives are on the same cable there are
3? It's as if the 2nd DVD drive wasn't showing up when it was plugged
into the other IDE port.

I'm going to try burning 2 DVD's with my drives plugged in the one
cable and just compare how it performs with my original setup....

 

[Odie Ferrous]

I think that that is stretching it a bit.
Alot he just makes up.


The Brits sent their criminals to Australia.
What the hell did they sent to New Zealand?

The ones that the Netherlands refused from previous bad experiences?


Odie

 

[Rod Speed]

(e-mail address removed) wrote

One thing that's interesting is that I get no performance problems
when reading multiple DVD's at once (e.g. using DVD Shrink or DVD
Decrypter). It's only when writing them using Nero, so perhaps it's
something to do with the way Nero is buffering the data?

Certainly possible. Try it with Roxio EMC.

If anything I would expect reading to be more of a problem since I
get speeds up to 12x sometimes (though on average it's around 8x).

Writing is a bit different in the sense that the software may
well try harder to ensure that the drives are being fed data
fast enough. Doesnt matter a damn with reading.

If there were any hardware problems to do with the motherboard,
cables, or the way I've configured the drives, wouldn't the same
problems exist when copying DVD's to my HD as well?

Its more complicated than that because the software will normally
attempt to keep the data flowing continuous when writing. Nero
may just be getting a bit confused with the new platform.

 

[Rod Speed]

I tried that, and after I rebooted it added them all back in the same
way. I also tried putting DVD drives on the same cable, and this is it
shows now:

Primary IDE Channel
- Device 0 - Ultra DMA Mode 2
- Device 1 - Ultra DMA Mode 2
Primary IDE Channel
- Device 0 - Ultra DMA Mode 5
- Device 1 - Not Applicable
Secondary IDE Channel
- Device 0 - Not Applicable
- Device 1 - Not Applicable
Secondary IDE Channel
- Device 0 - Not Applicable
- Device 1 - Not Applicable

Now it appears there are 3 IDE devices when previously there were only
2!

I'm confused...

So is the device manager. That's likely what is confusing Nero too.