Dual Burners - HDD bottleneck

[merc1212]

Here's my situation:

I want to burn 2 different DVDRs at one time from the same HDD. If I try to do it now at 8x (the fastest I want to burn), it gets by around 7.5x+ on both, but they are constantly running out of buffer.

I am quite certain the HDD both sets of data are coming from can't keep up with the seperate requests. Now I know I could probably just save each data set on a different HDD and my problem would be solved, but my PC just isn't organized that way, so I would have to move one set before burning and it just wouldn't save me much time and add quite a bit of hassle.

SO.... does anyone know if a RAID 0 or 1 would alleviate that problem? I'm thinking the RAID 0 could probably help since each drive only has to go crazy for half the data (still jumping all over the place, but doesn't need to get the full stream) and RAID 1 may just have one drive getting one set of data and the other looking after the other. Has anyone tried either solution? Is using seperate drives really the only solution?

Thanks a bunch!

------------------------
C2D @ 3.2ghz, P5B dlx, 2Gb ram, 3 * 250gb HDDs, 1 ATA burner and 1 SATA burner.

 

[PurdueRy]

8x speed is only 11MB/s

Two 8x drives would be 22MB/s. Which is well below the transfer rate of a hard drive.

I would try either buffering more or checking your hard drive with HDTach or similar program to make sure it is working correctly.

 

[jpeyton]

You need to make sure that your hard drive and each of the optical drives are all on separate channels.

RAID 0 is a bad idea.

 

[Zepper]

jpeyton is on the right track - you may have to buy an add-on controller card to achieve a channel per drive. If you are trying to burn two separate files or sets of files to two separate burners, then you may need to have one file or set of files on one HDD and the other on another HDD. You may have to experiment with whether it is better to have both HDDs on one controller and both burners or the others or to have one of each on each controller to get the best optimization.

.bh.

 

[Modelworks]

probably not the problem , but make sure the drives are defragged well.

 

[merc1212]

I'm convinced the HDD is the problem.... the drive may be able to read 60-70mb/s from a sequential set of data (tested HDtach), but I'm accessing two different sets at the same time from different areas on the drive. The head is jumping from one area to the other slowing everything down. 20mb/s or so is about all it can muster.

The HDD is SATA on one controller, the first burner is also SATA, while the second burner is IDE on its own channel. I will run a test with the data coming from two different HDDs to see if that will narrow down the problem. From what I've read on other forums, it should work from two different HDDs but I'd really like to use RAID to make it appear in the OS as one drive so that I don't have to be constantly moving data between drives. I know RAID is not popular for enthusiast PCs due to the small or even negative performance increases, but I'm thinking this may be one of those scenarios where it would be of benefit. I'd keep the OS and important stuff on a separate drive.

Thanks for the responses! Keep 'em coming!

Marc

 

[dwcal]

The problem isn't transfer rate, it's all the head seeks from the HD trying to read two files at once. Here's my idea. Forget about RAID. Get another hard drive. Put one ISO on one HD, the other ISO on the other HD. Burn away.

 

[merc1212]

dwcal - exactly. HDD can supply at a higher rate, but not from two different locations.

I guess I'll just have to change my workflow and use 2 HDDs ... I was sure someone on here would have tried a RAID setup for this purpose and could tell me if it worked or not. On paper I think it would, but there are alot of things that a RAID 0 or 1 look good for on paper but don't deliver in practice.

Cheers

 

[Fraggable]

Originally posted by: merc1212
dwcal - exactly. HDD can supply at a higher rate, but not from two different locations.

I guess I'll just have to change my workflow and use 2 HDDs ... I was sure someone on here would have tried a RAID setup for this purpose and could tell me if it worked or not. On paper I think it would, but there are alot of things that a RAID 0 or 1 look good for on paper but don't deliver in practice.

Cheers

Sorry I can't help with this particular issue, but I did once burn 250 music CDs for my brother. Here was how I did it:

Bought 4 IDE LightScribe DVD+/- DL burners form Newegg. Installed them as master/slave on my 2 IDE channels. Set up a RAID 0 array with w 80GB SATA drives (I didn't do all this just to burn the CDs, this was just how I was set up). I used Nero to burn all 4 CDs at once and used SureThing CD Labeler to burn the LightScribe labels on them. Not once while I had all 4 burning at once did I have a interface speed problem like you're having, but then all of them were burning from the same set of music tracks and LightScribe label image.

And about your remark about RAID 0 not being worth it in enthusiast PCs, that's not true. RAID 0 for me makes a big difference with file transfers, installations, etc. I'm not using it anymore because I just got sick of reinstalling Windows XP and Vista on the array and having to load the drivers from floppy every time. I know, I'm lazy but it just got old the 10th time around.

 

[merc1212]

Originally posted by: Fraggable

Sorry I can't help with this particular issue, but I did once burn 250 music CDs for my brother. Here was how I did it:

Bought 4 IDE LightScribe DVD+/- DL burners form Newegg. Installed them as master/slave on my 2 IDE channels. Set up a RAID 0 array with w 80GB SATA drives (I didn't do all this just to burn the CDs, this was just how I was set up). I used Nero to burn all 4 CDs at once and used SureThing CD Labeler to burn the LightScribe labels on them. Not once while I had all 4 burning at once did I have a interface speed problem like you're having, but then all of them were burning from the same set of music tracks and LightScribe label image.

And about your remark about RAID 0 not being worth it in enthusiast PCs, that's not true. RAID 0 for me makes a big difference with file transfers, installations, etc. I'm not using it anymore because I just got sick of reinstalling Windows XP and Vista on the array and having to load the drivers from floppy every time. I know, I'm lazy but it just got old the 10th time around.

Interesting - while burning CDs wouldn't use up as much bandwidth ( at 32x I think it would be 4.8mbs?) you had 4 of them going, so it would compare to my situation. Then again you were burning 4 copies of the same data, so it probably wouldn't put the same strain on the HDD.

While RAID 0 sounds fun to try and does have its benefits, people like you keep saying how much hassle it is, so maybe I should just stay away. The point of me burning 2 at once was to save time, and storing the same type of stuff on two different drives will just mess with the way I have things organized. I thought having a RAID would alow me to burn and keep the data organized but I need to remind myself that it will be a pain in and of itself.

Thanks for sharing your experience

 

[dwcal]

Originally posted by: merc1212
While RAID 0 sounds fun to try and does have its benefits, people like you keep saying how much hassle it is, so maybe I should just stay away. The point of me burning 2 at once was to save time, and storing the same type of stuff on two different drives will just mess with the way I have things organized. I thought having a RAID would alow me to burn and keep the data organized but I need to remind myself that it will be a pain in and of itself.

You wouldn't necessarily have to organize your files between the 2 drives. Use the 2nd drive as a scratch drive for ISOs. I think you can set a temp folder for images in Nero. Maybe have 2 different burning software and set a different temp folder on each of them.