Some advice please on IDE config

[NateSLC]

OK, here we go...

System main specs:

ASUS A7N8X Deluxe v. 2.0 (nForce2 Ultra 400)
AXP 2500+ @ 3200+ (proven stable)
1 GB PC3200
ATI AIW Radeon 9600

PCI Cards:

Belkin 7000 54Mbps Wireless card
Hauppauge PVR-250
Promise IDE Controller

4 Hard Drives:

120 GB WD (Using onboard nVidia IDE - Primary Master)
200 GB WD (Using onboard nVidia IDE - Primary Slave)
80 GB Seagate SATA (Using onboard SATA controller 1)
80 GB Seagate SATA (Using onboard SATA controller 2)

4 Optical Drives:

NEC 1300A 4x DVD burner (Using onboard nVidia IDE - Secondary Master)
Pioneer DVR-108 16x DVD burner (Using onboard nVidia IDE - Secondary Slave)
ASUS CRW-5224A CD Burner (Using Promise IDE card - Primary Master)
Pioneer DVD-120 (Using Promise IDE card - Primary Slave)

I use onboard SoundStorm audio. I frequently use the composite out on my AIW for TV.

Most used software:

Beyond TV 3.5 (is actively recording to 200GB WD hard drive a lot of the time)
ATI MMC DVD Player
IE
Outlook 2002
iTunes
Nero 6

Now the scenario is set, here's my issue:

When burning CD's (not DVDs) with Nero (on any of the burners) buffer levels constantly drop to 0% which makes a total burn time of around 10 minutes at least. With my 52x ASUS burner, I don't see why this is happening. Am I totally saturating the PCI bus?

Thanks ahead of time, elite Anandtech peoples.

(Edited for clarity before first response)

 

[Zepper]

You want to have your source drive on another channel from your target drive and for optimum results, nothing else should be accessing those channels (not just the drives, but the entire channels - as only one drive can operate per channel at any given time) during burning. Assuming you aren't running other programs (with other drive accesses) while burning, you have little fear of saturating the PCI bus. And your source drive needs to be able to keep up with your target drive.
For example: I have a 4220 (20x max read) drive feeding a 48x burner. I have to set my burner at 16x in order for the source to keep up.

. Also your video recording app may be eating up too much interrupt time for the burning proceess to work well. You may have to set your burning process to high priority while giving the video recording app a lower priority.
.bh.

 

[NateSLC]

Zepper,

Thanks for the advice. Here's what I've tried:

Burning a CD 'on the fly' with all the NEC 1300A and Pioneer DVR-108. Both of these are on the nVidia controller while the burner (ASUS) is on the Promise controller. Nero shows the ASUS burner's buffer constantly filling and emptying while the main read buffer is 100% full. My system becomes very sluggish as well. I've tried burning at 32x, 24x. and 16x with the same results.

I don't have this problem when using the drives in reverse, for example: Read with the ASUS and burn with the Pioneer 108 at 32x. To test even further, I burned another CD with this method while ripping a DVD with the NEC 1300A. Worked fine and my system didn't slow at all.

Is this a problem with the ASUS burner or maybe the Promise controller? Has anyone had any similar issues with the 52x ASUS or the Promise 100 TX2?

I'm starting to think it's either of two items, especially because I just burned 2 DVDs at the same time at 4x speed using Nero's 'use multiple recorders' option without either burner's buffer falling below 85%.