DVD burning problem...

[homestarmy]

I have recently rebuilt my system. It is running at 2.7GHz (Sempron) and has 2GB of RAM, so that should not be a problem.

Previously, I had my hard drives connected to a PCI Promise ATA controller and my DVD Roms connected to the motherboard. I was advised here that the Hard Drives would be faster on the motherboard, so now it is swapped, HDDs to Motherboard, and DVDRs to ATA Controller card.

Now when I burn an .iso the CPU jumps all over the place almost nothing to 80 to 100 over and over again. The buffer is all over the place, and my system is completely bogged down, to the point where you can type and it cannot keep up with me on the screen. It takes around 20 minutes to burn a full DVD at 8x. I am using Nero 7 on Windows XP MCE. I have tried two different DVD drives each on their own channel as Master, NEC 3520 and 3550. I have burned from both of my hard drives and they have no problems.

Is my physical configuration not best? I am finding it hard to believe that the advice that I was given that the HDDs will be faster on the motherboard was correct.


What can I do to resolve this? I am thinking I should just swap the connections so they are like they were before.

 

[homestarmy]

Another question regarding this. If I take the ATA controller card out of the equation and make my DVDRs slaves to my hard drives, will the data be able to transfer fast enough for a DVDR to burn from a HDD on the same Parallel cable?

 

[Ctrackstar126]

http://club.cdfreaks.com/?s=f15519007245efb3066d8153228ca9f9&

 

[homestarmy]

Anything specific I should look for there?

 

[Slikkster]

You don't mention which Promise card you have, but I've used several, and each of them recommends AGAINST using any atapi (CDROM/CDRW/DVD, etc) drives on the cards.

There's no reason I can think of that the drives would run faster on the motherboard if the Promise card is a recent vintage. In other words, it should be able to give you the highest UltraDMA setting available for your hard drives.

Additionally, it's quite apparent that your DVD drive is not running in DMA (direct memory access, by passing the CPU) mode when connected to the Promise card. That's what the problem is. You need to put it back on the motherboard IDE port.


Here's what I would do: If you have enough motherboard IDE ports to cover all your drives, both hard disk and CD/DVD, I would configure them this way:

IDE 1 Primary: Hard Drive 1 set for master (your C: drive)
IDE 1 Secondary: Hard Drive 2 set for slave

IDE 2 Primary: DVD-RW writer set for master
IDE 2 Secondary: DVD-ROM reader or CDROM reader set for slave

Keep "like" devices on the same IDE cable. Best not to mix and match a hard drive as primary and a DVD drive as slave. Instead, use two hard drives on one cable and two DVD/CD drives on the other, with the DVD/CD burner as master on its cable and your C: drive hard disk as master on its cable.

Make sure you set all the jumper pins accordingly on each of your drives.

 

[homestarmy]

See, I thought that was the case too. The card is admittedly a bit old. It is an ATA 100 card, but ATA133 is a gimmick anyway.

The card is just listed in the device manager as Promise Technology Inc. Ultra IDE Controller. Are there other numbers that I should look up and post here about it? It was one of those that was boxed with or FAR with Maxtor drives a few years back.

I was told (although I believed it to be incorrect) that connecting my HDDs to that card would limit their speed because they are transferring over the PCI bus. Is that correct or incorrect?

Also, my goal is to be able to burn two completely different ISO files at once to the different drives. In the past, I had been able to do this without issue, as long as the .iso files were on two different drives (four completely different IDE channels in total, two on the motherboard, two on the controller). Would I be able to do this if they are all connected to the motherboard?

I ultimately would like to be able to (if possible) burn two ISO files from the same HDD onto the two different DVDRs. What would be the best configuration for that?

Please advise, I thank you greatly for your assistance!!!

 

[Slikkster]

IDE is part of the PCI bus, anyway, so there's no speed issue there with the Promise card vs. the IDE controller itself.

All you can do is experiment with the setup I outlined above. Give that a shot. If you don't have acceptable performance, here's what I would do:

Put Hard Drive 1 on Promise Card Controller 1 Master

Put Hard Drive 2 on Promise Card Controller 2 Master (make sure jumper pin on drive is set correctly)

Put DVD-Writer 1 on IDE 1 Primary and set to Master

Put DVD-Writer 2 on IDE 2 Primary and set to Master.

 

[homestarmy]

Great, that is EXACTLY how I had it before. I can't believe the people told me that the PCI bus would limit the HDDs when the IDE interface is a part of the PCI bus! The thing that gets me is that others agreed! Let me link to the thread. Maybe I misread it.

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=29&threadid=1801208

BTW, the only one other thing that I have in my setup is a third HDD that is ONLY for the MAC OS, but is not used outside of that OS. If it is connected in any of the four places, if it is not being used or accessed at all, can it impact performance on any of the other active drives on that cable?

Thanks again for your help!

 

[homestarmy]

Also, would there be any difference between running "tests" when burning DVDs (I haven't done this for years) and actually burning one to test and see if it bogs down the system or reaches a bottleneck?

 

[homestarmy]

ttt

 

[homestarmy]

ttt again, please respond

 

[Slikkster]

I don't know whether the test would be as conclusive as an actual burn. I'm not sure what you're asking, though. A test might indicate whether the system is going to get bogged down without actually burning a disc, but I can't see that it's going to alleviate any performance problems. So, my guess is testing will not affect performance. Trial and error, though. Do your own experiments. Media is pretty cheap now.