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Using the PC while burning.... (or Can I safely burn in the background?)

H

Helznicht

Senior member
I have a Yamaha 8x CDRW and whenever im burning, my PC seems REAL sluggish. Is there a way to fix this, is this a common problem? Also, I have heard its bad to use the PC whils buring because it can increase you chance of a bad burn. Is this true, is there a software solution for this?

Thanks
 
You're computer will get slower due to having to probably take an mp3 or data and either turn it into wav or make it readable by an ordinary cd-rom...

There's a lot of complicated steps and your hard drive and processor are usually working up a storm. If you use the computer while burning, you could use it too much and data that is flowing to the burner gets stopped, meaning once that data doesn't reach the burner, the burner gives a buffer underun error, because it needs to continually keep burning.

It's best to NOT use the computer while burning, or use simple tasks such as icq, msn, maybe even browsing if your computer isn't too shabby...

There is no software solution, but there is a hardware solution on new burners, called burnproof, where the burner can stop while burning a cd, and resume once again, greatly reducing the chance of buffer underun errors.

Hope that helps ya 🙂
 
What type of PC do you have? (CPU type & speed)

What type of Hard Drive do you have? (Size and Speed)

What programs do you have running while the CD burn is going?
(Including background programs like virus scanners).

How is the CD-Burner connected to the system? Is it on the same cable as the
hard drive?


It is common for CD-burning to use a lot of the system, because it has to maintain
a constant draw from the HD to the CD during the burn. There are ways to work around
that on most modern systems, but it helps to know more about the system in order to
identify areas of bottlenecks.

For software, you can try turning off background tasks while doing the burn.

Also make sure you run a regular scandisk and defrag of the drive where the
information you want to put on CD lies. That will improve the systems ability
to transfer data to the CD.

Try switching the CDRW to a different IDE channel than the Hard Drive, that way the
system can access one device without interrupting the other while doing the transfer.

Doing anything on a system that can interrupt the flow of data from the HD to the CD can
result in a bad burn. You might get away with a few small tasks that don't use the
HD a lot, but in general you have to know how well your drive and system handle a
medium to heavy load of user requests. You say your system is already sluggish
during a burn, so its probably already pushing close to the limit.
Also, it depends on what speed you are trying to burn the CD at; switching from
8x to 4x or 2x might give you a little more leeway to do other things with the
system while burning.

Newer setups and drives can handle the load better, and some custom setups can be
designed to maximize system performance while at the same time doing a CD burn.
I can start a large download, or read Anandtech forums, while doing a fairly
quick CD-write, without trouble. But, I also try not to do anything that
accesses the same drive that the CD program is reading from, and I try to use a
more efficient burn program that can better monitor the drive buffer or
take advantage of burn-proof technology.




 
P3 @ 840 / 256ram / bh6 mb
60 Gig 5400rpm storage/iso/mp3 drive on IDE #2 Master
Only Nortons AV watcher
IDE #1 slave

Thanks for the info guys, learned a good deal.

I also have Adaptec CD Creator (never use it, but wife does) can this mess with Nero/Cdrwin/Juggler? Should I uninstall?






 
You have discovered why I will never have a IDE burner . . . the best are SCSI and Firewire at present time. They do not involve the CPU as much and are less prone to data drops and interrupts.

USB is too slow . . . maybe when USB2 matures it will join the ranks of the acceptable. Always go external if you can. With SCSI or Firewire external, most the pitfalls cited by CQuinn go away.

 
"...the best are SCSI and Firewire at present time..."

I know that Firewire is extensively supported on the Mac -

...do we have software on the PC that will support Firewire?

🙂 curious - because I've never seen it advertised..
 
I've been able to use Winamp, run ICQ, and browse the web all while burning/copying a CD with my oldie Yamaha 4416s on my lowly machine---without turning out any coasters. 🙂

....did I mention it's a SCSI-burner? 😉
 
What OS are you running? When I installed Win2k on my comp, by default it set the transfer mode for my CD-RW (I have SONY 12x) to PIO only. Whenever I tried to burn my system would slow down, even the mouse movement lagged. However after I switched to DMA mode everything became normal, no slowdowns when I'm burning. Check your settings for the transfer mode (go to device manager, then to IDE controllers and check the properties for your channel that has CD-RW drive).
 
I could encode divx while burning CD using nero.
Although I put the encoding process priority in idle, to make it safe.

The cpu utilization is around 99% since all remaining CPU power
is used by the encoder.
 
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