Burner Questions.

[HKSturboKID]

I have a 12x iomega (samsung ide)burner that I got from the compusa deal back on February.
Question is y is it that when I burn on my 12x with nero to do CD-copy on the fly (cd to cd) it takes like 12 minutes and 31 seconds to complete. Meanwhile I am burning the same cd on my 6x burner and it only took like 8 minute and 30 seconds to finish. The 12x is in a PIII 850 system with 256 memory and feeding off a 50x cdrom(ide). The 6x burner is in a pii 300 with 128 meg ram and feed off a 40x reader ide. The 12x has burnproof and the 6x don't and only have 2mb buffer.
Can anyone answer my question or help me?

Thanks a Million.

 

[rw120555]

Like I've said before, if it is an Iomega drive, you should just be thankful it works at all. But, other than that, one thing I would check is the source CDROM drives. Especially if you are copying Audio CDs, those 40X/50X alleged times may not mean much. My guess is the one cdrom supports DAE somewhere above 4X and less than 8X, so it only burns reliably at 4X. The other one has a DAE of 6 or above. They might even have the same DAE, but the Iomega may only be able to do 4, 8, or 12X, while the 6X can do 6X.

You can go to CDSpeed2000 and see if it already has benchmarks for your cdrom drives. In particular, check out the DAE benchmarks if you are doing audio CDs. If not there, it is easy enough to download their benchmarking software and run it yourself. Perhaps your burning software can do its own benchmarks -- I know Easy CD does.

Let us know what the results of those tests are. If the problem isn't with the CDROM drives, then there are other sorts of things you can try. But, I would check out the CDROMs first.

 

[rw120555]

To clarify my last answer -- lets suppose both cdroms do 7X DAE. For your 6X, that is more than fast enough, so it burns at its max speed of 6X.

But for your 12X burner, if it is like mine, it will burn at 1X, 4X, 8X, and 12X. Your CDROM is too slow for 8X burning, so the writer goes to the next fastest speed, which is only 4X.

So ironically, given your cdrom drives, the 6X will actually burn faster than the 12X.

If this is the case (and this may or may not describe your situation) then one solution is to buy a faster CDROM drive that can take full advantage of your 12X burner. I was recently in a very similar situation -- had a 12X Plexwriter coupled with a CDROM that could only do 4X DAE. I bought a Teac 540E CDROM which was more than fast enough to take advantage of my Plexwriter's capabilities.

 

[HKSturboKID]

Thanks rw120555 for the theory. I give it a try later.