copying from DVD to the internal hard drive is usually limited by the DVD
reader's speed.
But, 16X is plenty fast, so as you anticipated it should yield better
performance.
Potential problems/solutions include:
1. Antivirus with scan-on-access. If you trust the files are not infected,
temporarily turn this feature off.
2. Other disk and/or CPU intensive programs. These can be anything that
moves a lot of data around, including playing movies, editting pictures,
editting videos, WORD (if document is very large), continuous anti-virus
scanning or adware scanning. Use the XP task manager (via single
CTRL-ALT-DEL) to see which process(es) are using a lot of CPU. Turn off
such programs when copying files.
3. In theory, a badly fragmented and nearly full hard drive could lead to
such problems. But, in practice that is not likely. Still, check free
space and fragmentation. Running CHKDSK C: to see if there are any errors
in the file system is also a good idea. If error found, run CHKDSK C: /R
and reboot.
4. Internal hard drive is not working at its rated capacity. For example,
if an ATA/100 drive is connected to an ATA/33 controller, it will run at
ATA/33 speed. Or, if the data transfer mode is "PIO" instead of "DMA", then
it will run even slower. On a related note, I have heard that one should
never connect an optical reader/writer to the same IDE cable as the primary
internal hard dirve, since the optical device may degrade the performance of
the hard drive.
To eliminate the hard drive and its settings as the source of the problem,
try copying one large from the hard drive to itself or to an external USB
2.0 hard drive. DVD to hard drive should be only slightly slower per Gig
for large files.
5. The CPU is very slow. Any pentium 4 or equivalent should be far faster
than any DVD reader. But, a much older CPU may not be. Ditto for
motherboard's buss.
6. Insufficient RAM. XP loves RAM. And, while it will run with as little
as 128 Meg, it will not run well. If under 512 Meg, check the task manager
to see whether copying from DVD invokes the use of a lot of swap file
(pagefile usage). If it does, then adding RAM will probably help.
7. Other users logged-in. Even XP home edition can support multiple users
IDs. If more than one is logged in, each will be given some portion of the
resources. And, if one has a large background task running, it may reduce
performance for all users. With sufficient RAM and CPU this should not be a
problem. But, on a weaker machine, it could be trouble.
8. Reboot, and try copying when XP is "fresh". I have noticed that XP will
eventually slow down, if it is run continuously for days. But, if it is
used "hard", performance might drop off after only several hours of
intensive usage.
