Problems With A CD-RW Please help Frustrated

[Mrdiddley]

Sony CD-RW CRX160 12x8x32x
450MHZ AMD K6-2
128 MB RAM
20 GB HDD IDE1 master
5 GB HDDD IDE1 slave
cd rom IDE2 master
cdrw IDE2 slave

meets min sys requirements


I receive underwrite errors at max speed, both on RW and R disks. also when it gets to about 13% of a full disk, i get a write error. seems okay at slower speeds like 4x, but I'd like to use it to full potential. I haven't made a CD-to-CD transfer yet. this is happening when copying from (c)HDD to CD. The program used is Sony Extreme, and the files are being converted from MP3 to Wav in the process.
what can cause this? should i try putting it as master? Could it be fragmentation problems with the HDD? The MP3 to wav convertion? No other programs are running, but Norton Antivirus and Black Ice are in the background.
Any suggestions or links would be great!
Thankyou all, Brian

 

[cmf21]

I have the same cdrw drive as you do. I thought it stunk at first as well because I kept getting the same errors as you did over and over. It got quite annoying because I couldn't finish one disk without getting a error. I disabled dma and everything else like they suggest but still problems. I even tried copying the stuff to the hard drive before copying it to the cdrw but still got errors. That's when I started to think it was the software and not the drive at all. I haven't tried any other software since I've recently got rid of it but maybe you should download nero and try that. Everyone seems to prefer it to the stuff manafuctures package the drives with.

 

[mrbios]

The reason you get the underruns is because of your computer. It is extremely tough for a K6-2 450 to decode an MP3 while burning at 12x. Your best bet would to be burning MP3's at 12x, because your computer can't keep up. It can for a while because of the memory buffer and the buffer on your drive, but it eventually runs dry.

Russell "Mr.Bios" Sampson

 

[Tominator]

K6-2....Oh Oh! a VIA MVP3 motherboard? They had tremendous incompatibilities with CDR/RW drives. Bummer.

BTW, never run any antivirus while burning.:disgust:

 

[Mrdiddley]

TNX for the help. It's an ASUS p5-ab forgot to add that. Any other suggestions? I've noticed that i can't defrag HDD it says there isn't enought memory. I have 128MB. Fairly new install of OS (Win98). Maybe a correlation?
Bri

 

[Mrdiddley]

cmf what is nero?

 

[dowxp]

Hm... perhaps its the cpu... thats my guess. other than that, i would blame it on windows. (my experience)

 

[Mrdiddley]

Any good->great frre cd creating software. Is rioport good?

 

[Muadib]

Nero is another program used to copy cd-r /cdrw disks. It does mp3 to wav on the fly also, and is used by many here. Try it, you wont be sorry. You might also try making your cdrw the master, and the cd the slave.

 

[nippyjun]

I had the same problem with a hp cdrw that was a rebadged sony. I got rid of it and got the plextor with burnproof. The funny thing is, is that even at 12 speed, the burnproof feature is rarely used compared to the hp that made a good amount of coasters. Both drives have 2 meg buffer. I guess the plextor uses the buffer more efficiently.

 

[Wallysaurus]

Mrdiddley,
When you formatted your hard drive, did you use a third party disk utility like MaxBlast, etc.? If so this might be your defrag problem. Some of these utilities use 4kb clusters regardless of the size of the hard drive. If the partition is bigger than 16G, I believe, then it must be formatted with 8kb or larger clusters. This is why you are getting the "out of memory error". At least this is what I encountered with my first large hard drive. If I'm wrong, I'm sure one of the more knowlegeabe members of this forum will get it right for you.

 

[HeinekinMan2]

I would try swapping your CD devices making your CDRW as the MASTER on the secondary IDE channel, and your CDROM drive as SLAVE. I would also play around with DMA settings. Some high speed CDRW drives require DMA mode to be enabled in order to burn at speeds greater than 8x. My PlexWriter 8432A requires DMA mode to be enabled, this is per Plextor. Also make sure that your CDRW is being properly recognized by your mobo's BIOS (PIO mode 4, DMA 2, etc) with what's listed in your owner's manual.

I don't know anything about AMD CPUs but sometimes (as in the Intel world), certain CPUs and chipsets are known to be problematic with regard to CDRW drives and burning. I've always had very good luck using Intel CPUs and Intel chipsets (the 440BX chipset is rock solid in this regard).

Also, try using different s/w. I don't know of any free CD mastering s/w but the one that I HIGHLY recommend is CeQuadrat WinOnCD v3.7 Power Edition. Paid $69.00 plus tax/shipping directly from Adaptec (they bought out CeQuadrat last year) but man it is a very robust, solid, and easy to use app. Worth every penny.

 

[HeinekinMan2]

One last thing, my system is fully populated: USB, SCSI, two NICs, two hard drives, etc. I have a TON of stuff running (antivirus, networking stuff, etc); I never disable anything and never have any problems burning at 8x or on-the-fly between my CDROM reader and my CDRW drive. Shoot, sometimes I'm surfing the web while I'm burning a disk!

 

[Mrdiddley]

Thanks for the input all of you! Any other suggestions? I've been very busy and haven't been able to crack open the case to try all the things people have reccmnded. Any other input to eek out a bit more burn speed would be great.
Brian