Burning COASTERS (again!)

[suklee]

Have burned 2 DVD and 2 CD coasters so far today... :frown: (only 1 successful DVD burn.) Pioneer 106D in an USB2 enclosure.

Each time, it'd fail immediately. check out the pics... it makes an identical ring in the middle:

CD
DVD

Used Nero and DVD Decrypter. Decrypter gives the following error message while doing a SIMULATION-

I/O Error!

Device: [0:0:0] PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-106D 1.08 ( F: )

CDB: 2A 00 00 00 01 10 00 00 10 00
Interpretation: Write (10) - Sectors: 272-287

Reason: The semaphore timeout period has expired.

What I've tried:
- flashed drive to latest firmware (1.08)
- used ForceASPI
- updated Windows XP using Windows Update

It seems I'm always running into problems with burning coasters! grrrrr :|

Any suggestions would be appreciated, thanks.

 

[suklee]

^ Morning ^

 

[metalmania]

don't use the enclosure and try again.

 

[corkyg]

Good tip from Metalmania. Sometimes USB - even 2.0 - loses contact. I find Firewire to be much more reliable for an external burner. Also - set up your CDR or DVD on your hard drive - complete - then burn Disk at Once.

 

[suklee]

Hmm, all right, I'll take it out of the enclosure tomorrow. Just that I haven't had any problmes til today. Maybe it's worht investing a few bucks for a PCI firewire card and move the whole thing off USB?

 

[Jeff7]

Confirmed that you're running at USB 2.0 speeds? Try a hard drive in the enclosure and run a benchmark. If you're at 1.1, you'll not exceed 10MB/sec. If you're at 2.0 speeds, the benchmark should rival an ATA/33/66 drive's performance.

For the record, what enclosure are you using?

 

[FishTankX]

If you're running at USB 1.1, you won't be running any faster than 1.25MB/sec

 

[gsellis]

I will not definitively say this is your problem, but the reason I use Firewire is that it was designed with streaming data in mind. USB leans more towards servicing all of the interrupts from all of the USB devices. You could be running into a 'busy' issue, especially if you have other USB devices that are doing tasks while you are burning. That could include keyboard and mouse. That is what it could be, theoretically. I have avoided the issue by just doing Firewire, so cannot say that I have seen this problem in the field.

 

[suklee]

Originally posted by: Jeff7
Confirmed that you're running at USB 2.0 speeds? Try a hard drive in the enclosure and run a benchmark. If you're at 1.1, you'll not exceed 10MB/sec. If you're at 2.0 speeds, the benchmark should rival an ATA/33/66 drive's performance.

For the record, what enclosure are you using?

Some cheapo brand! Here's a shot of the box: click click

I've taken the DVD drive out of the enclosure, and gonna stick it into my machine in a second. If I put a HD in there and bench it... am I looking for it not to exceed 10MB/s or 1.25MB/s?

 

[suklee]

One more question.. just want to make sure: those discs in my OP, are completely coasterized right? Theres no way to salvage em?

 

[BFG10K]

Make sure the drive has the latest firmware for it. Also make sure your system has the latest BIOS and chipset drivers and avoid using any devices on the USB (eg keyboard) while it's burning. Also make sure the burner is set to the lowest speed (1x).

Theres no way to salvage em?

Not unless they're RW.

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: Kai920

Originally posted by: Jeff7
Confirmed that you're running at USB 2.0 speeds? Try a hard drive in the enclosure and run a benchmark. If you're at 1.1, you'll not exceed 10MB/sec. If you're at 2.0 speeds, the benchmark should rival an ATA/33/66 drive's performance.

For the record, what enclosure are you using?

Some cheapo brand! Here's a shot of the box: click click

I've taken the DVD drive out of the enclosure, and gonna stick it into my machine in a second. If I put a HD in there and bench it... am I looking for it not to exceed 10MB/s or 1.25MB/s?

Depends. Benchmarks aren't going to show everything. A cd/dvd rom burner requires a nice pure stream of data to burn properly... They have buffers and stuff and they try to slow the disk down to match the data supply, but once they run out of buffer then they have to simply stop burning. They are like a vinyl record with one continous line of data, if it has to stop burning it breaks that one continous line. They try to restart at the same spot they stopped, but that's very hard to do and chancy.

You could get a great speed, but if it interrupts for more then a second or so, then your going to produce coasters.

Also burners require extra instructions not included in the regular ATA specifications. Previously only SCSI had the proper control over the cdrom to do what was nessicarry to do burning, so lots of times OSes used SCSI emulation on the ATA drives to get the proper amount of control. Newer specifications and drivers work around that to get real control over ATA burners using standard controls(not sure of the details).

It's entirely possible that the hardware in the enclosure is faulty and would handle a normal harddrive fine, but geek out on a burner and produce coasters. Lots of IDE to PCI cards have similar problems.

 

[suklee]

Originally posted by: BFG10K
Make sure the drive has the latest firmware for it. Also make sure your system has the latest BIOS and chipset drivers and avoid using any devices on the USB (eg keyboard) while it's burning. Also make sure the burner is set to the lowest speed (1x).

Theres no way to salvage em?

Not unless they're RW.

OK, then I guess I gotta junk them.

-Drive has latest firmware (1.08)
-Motherboard has latest BIOS (Intel D845GEBV2)
-Chipset drivers? I think I should be okay here...

I uplugged my tablet and Zire71 cradle; the only other USB device plugged in was my Logitech mouse. Could this be causing any problems? Maybe I'll try to dig up a USB-PS2 connector, and leave the entire USB bus dedicated to the burner (which was already set at 1x, and as I said before, it fails simulation of burn in DVD Decrypter immediately everytime)

 

[suklee]

Originally posted by: drag

Originally posted by: Kai920

Originally posted by: Jeff7
Confirmed that you're running at USB 2.0 speeds? Try a hard drive in the enclosure and run a benchmark. If you're at 1.1, you'll not exceed 10MB/sec. If you're at 2.0 speeds, the benchmark should rival an ATA/33/66 drive's performance.

For the record, what enclosure are you using?

Some cheapo brand! Here's a shot of the box: click click

I've taken the DVD drive out of the enclosure, and gonna stick it into my machine in a second. If I put a HD in there and bench it... am I looking for it not to exceed 10MB/s or 1.25MB/s?

Depends. Benchmarks aren't going to show everything. A cd/dvd rom burner requires a nice pure stream of data to burn properly... They have buffers and stuff and they try to slow the disk down to match the data supply, but once they run out of buffer then they have to simply stop burning. They are like a vinyl record with one continous line of data, if it has to stop burning it breaks that one continous line. They try to restart at the same spot they stopped, but that's very hard to do and chancy.

You could get a great speed, but if it interrupts for more then a second or so, then your going to produce coasters.

Great, I understand this, but my problem is that it doesn't even get started on the burn. Do you think your explanation still applies in my case?

When it fails, it fails immediately (as stated above) after I press the burn button. Yet the burner has started the burn by making an inner ring... not sure if there's any data written or if it's just a "preparatory burn".

<snip>

It's entirely possible that the hardware in the enclosure is faulty and would handle a normal harddrive fine, but geek out on a burner and produce coasters. Lots of IDE to PCI cards have similar problems.

I've used this enclosure on Firewire on two different SN45Gs without problems whatsoever. USB2 using the same enclosure, however, has been more hit-and-miss. I burned lots of coasters on my previous machine (I think the thread's still around here somewhere, lol)... that problem was fixed with a motherboard BIOS upgrade.

Now, I think I've exhausted most of my options wrt BIOS and drivers and such. (the only thing left to try is to move my mouse off the USB port, but I doubt that'll change anything lol) I may just fork out a little $ to get a Firewire PCI card and hopefully that'll solve everything.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: Kai920

Originally posted by: Jeff7
Confirmed that you're running at USB 2.0 speeds? Try a hard drive in the enclosure and run a benchmark. If you're at 1.1, you'll not exceed 10MB/sec. If you're at 2.0 speeds, the benchmark should rival an ATA/33/66 drive's performance.

For the record, what enclosure are you using?

Some cheapo brand! Here's a shot of the box: click click

I've taken the DVD drive out of the enclosure, and gonna stick it into my machine in a second. If I put a HD in there and bench it... am I looking for it not to exceed 10MB/s or 1.25MB/s?

I had a cheap enclosure already - the power supply died after maybe a total of 1 hour of use, but in that time, it did perform just fine. But I think it was a different brand of junk than that one you've got there. I finally invested in an expensive aluminum thing at Newegg. Very sturdy design; the power supply is a wall wart, but the whole thing works nicely. And it doesn't feel like it'll fall apart if you touch it.


As for speed, I used 10MB/sec as a rough estimate. I'd say to look for AIDA32 online somewhere - one of its plugins in the program was a disk benchmarker. Use any of its read options; the Linear Read works fine, and test the drive. If you're at 2.0, 10MB/sec should be EASILY surpassed; should be around 30MB/sec or more. If USB 1.1, then probably less than 2MB/sec actually.

 

[drag]

I've used this enclosure on Firewire on two different SN45Gs without problems whatsoever. USB2 using the same enclosure, however, has been more hit-and-miss. I burned lots of coasters on my previous machine (I think the thread's still around here somewhere, lol)... that problem was fixed with a motherboard BIOS upgrade.

Now, I think I've exhausted most of my options wrt BIOS and drivers and such. (the only thing left to try is to move my mouse off the USB port, but I doubt that'll change anything lol) I may just fork out a little $ to get a Firewire PCI card and hopefully that'll solve everything.

Ya, firewire is better for this sort of thing anyways. But now it sounds more and more like it's a hardware bug with the USB stuff. Could just be something to do with how the USB portion of the device is configured, maybe it needs a good strong signal to work 100%, a signal that is much stronger then is normally needed, so in a iffy situation it will break, but in a ideal situation it will work very well. Hardware sucks like that.

The "burns like a record" thing is something I always say in this situtuation because it might ring a bell in your head, like you noticed something that you didn't think was important. Habit I picked up from working phone tech. You always aim for the easiest fix first. 7 out of 10 it will work no matter what is going on. It's easy to get confused when dealing with irritating issues like this one.

I wonder how often people have trouble with this sort of thing with USB (1 or 2).

 

[suklee]

Update: Went out and bought a Firewire card last night , with TI chipset...

Burning as we speak, so far so good! :thumbsup: