CD burning: where's the bottleneck?

[DanRoy]

burning an 80 minute disc from data, not audio disc copy, i max out at about 10x... at 8x there is a 10:43 write time (no background computer use in any of these trials), and at 12x it takes 9:08. (16x is even a bit slower, at 9:31)

I'm using a recent version of Nero

at 8x the buffer stays constant at 92/93%, but going beyond that speed, up to 12x or 16x, the buffer drains really fast, and it pauses to refill, constantly, hundreds of times.

1.4 athlon (thunderbird), 512 mb ram, chipset: VIA KT266/333 (southbridge VIA VT8233), epox 8KHA motherboard. the drive is a plexwriter (plextor I guess), 16x max speed. need any more info? hard drive: western digital caviar SE (3 year warranty) 120GB, 7200rpm

where is the bottleneck? any way i can get full 16x speed without major hardware changes?

this would be useful as I am about to burn 25+ discs for a copyright procedure

 

[Nohr]

I'd assume your media can handle 16x. Do you have DMA enabled for the drive? Perhaps the burner's lens is dirty.

Keep in mind you can get a good brand new 52x CD burner for under $30 easily.

 

[imported_Phil]

Defrag all your drives/partitions, and close any other apps in the background. Either your hard disk can't keep up (most likely) or you're running out of RAM (unlikely, as the problem goes away if you burn the disc slower).

 

[DanRoy]

i defragged the drive and at 16x there was no difference in speed afterwards...

i wonder, is all this 52x stuff just hype, because you can never in reality burn that fast?

 

[imported_Kensai]

You can at the peak of the disk.