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Why does it take so long to read media in optical drives??

V

videobruce

Golden Member
For the time optical media has been out, why does it still take so long, around 30 seconds, for a optical disc to be read or reconized by the O/S (2k)?
I understand it has to spin up (a few seconds) and read the TOC (a few seconds, or should be), but why should/does that take what seems forever? The whole computer is at the mercy of this process since you can't do anything else while this is taking place. Even opening another folder doesn't happen untill the O/S reads the disc.

It doesn't seem to matter if it is a plain old CD or a DVD movie. Neither does what type of drive it is or how old the drive is. Mind you, I run a 'lean' machine without the usual 30 or 40 processes running at startyup I see many other with.

I could understand when they first came out, but that was light years ago (in computer time).

Input please.
 
Today I thought of the EXACT same thing. Why does entering a CD/DVD in a 2007 PC still practically freeze your whole OS for 30 seconds???
 
It's a shame that this is still a problem, even in Vista to some degree! I remember the days when I envied people with all-SCSI workstations, because those were said to be immune to the CD freeze. It's a pity that SCSI CD-RW and DVD-RW drives are no longer made. 🙁
 
Excellent question! I have always wondered this. Makes me HATE using the darn things. thankfully, most software I use is downloaded, and I stopped burning because of this and other little coaster type things. I am grateful for small external backup drives 🙂 Dave
 
The whole computer is at the mercy of this process since you can't do anything else while this is taking place. Even opening another folder doesn't happen untill the O/S reads the disc.
Click to expand...

You could if you used a seperate application to open that folder.

Why does entering a CD/DVD in a 2007 PC still practically freeze your whole OS for 30 seconds???
Click to expand...

It doesn't freeze the whole OS, just any process that issued a read() on the device because that read() call has to block until the data comes in and that requires waiting for the device to spin up. If you're using Windows it only seems like the whole OS froze because explorer tries to read the disc for things like autorun information.
 
Originally posted by: Nothinman
The whole computer is at the mercy of this process since you can't do anything else while this is taking place. Even opening another folder doesn't happen untill the O/S reads the disc.
Click to expand...

You could if you used a seperate application to open that folder.

Why does entering a CD/DVD in a 2007 PC still practically freeze your whole OS for 30 seconds???
Click to expand...

It doesn't freeze the whole OS, just any process that issued a read() on the device because that read() call has to block until the data comes in and that requires waiting for the device to spin up. If you're using Windows it only seems like the whole OS froze because explorer tries to read the disc for things like autorun information.
Click to expand...

Not true. It freezes ANY process that tries to read ANY drive.
 
Windows XP Pro x64 has the lag time for reading the disc still, but your pc does not freeze, it remains as responsive as it would have been had you not inserted a disc at all.
 
Originally posted by: videobruce
But, isn't a command window separated from Windows??
Click to expand...


Not in Windows 2000 in later. That's the major difference between the 9x tree and the NT tree: the 9x tree was still based in DOS, while the NT tree is not. Executing a command window is simply one way- in some situations, a more efficient one- to execute commands within Windows.
 
But, isn't a command window separated from Windows??
Click to expand...

No more than any other process is seperate from another. The whole point is that it's not the whole OS that's freezing but just explorer, but since explorer controls the desktop it gives the illusion that more is frozen than it really is.
 
it's not the whole OS that's freezing but just explorer, but since explorer controls the desktop it gives the illusion that more is frozen than it really is.
Click to expand...
And Bill refuses to remove Idiot Exploiter from Windows or at least separate it from the O/S...............:disgust:
 
Originally posted by: videobruce
For the time optical media has been out, why does it still take so long, around 30 seconds, for a optical disc to be read or reconized by the O/S (2k)?
I understand it has to spin up (a few seconds) and read the TOC (a few seconds, or should be), but why should/does that take what seems forever? The whole computer is at the mercy of this process since you can't do anything else while this is taking place. Even opening another folder doesn't happen untill the O/S reads the disc.

It doesn't seem to matter if it is a plain old CD or a DVD movie. Neither does what type of drive it is or how old the drive is. Mind you, I run a 'lean' machine without the usual 30 or 40 processes running at startyup I see many other with.

I could understand when they first came out, but that was light years ago (in computer time).

Input please.
Click to expand...

The answer:

Modern optical drives have to spin up to ABSURD speeds....and that takes time. And reading something like the TOC would take a few seconds at 1-2x speeds, the drives still spin up to full speed no matter what. They spin at speeds that are unreasonable to be done continually, so they are constantly spinning up and down. They're not really optimized to read a small file here or there, which is why there's always that long access when you hit the optical drive again after a while.
 
And Bill refuses to remove Idiot Exploiter from Windows or at least separate it from the O/S...............
Click to expand...

Um, it's only considered to be part of the OS because it's the main UI. It's a 100% seperate process and you can replace it with another window manager if you like.

 
This problem strikes extremely close to home for me.

This should have been fixed in Windows ME so that it wasn't a total pile.
 
This has gotten me curious, so I just tried what you were saying on my laptop. Maybe I am going about it incorrectly, but I didn't have any lag at all.

1. Opened two explorer windows.
2. Inserted a DVD into the CD Tray.
3. Selected the DVD Drive in one explorer window to read.
4. Browsed the hard disk all over the place when the DVD was trying to read.

Nothing hung up or stopped or even appeared frozen. I did the same test with only one explorer window open and started applications, browsed directories etc when the DVD was spinning up reading the TOC etc...

Is the difference Vista ( that is what is on my notebook)???

I have seen what you are talking about, but not on all systems. And I never really paid much attention to it.

pcgeek11
 
ahhh yes windows, or at least the shell, is extremely prone to freezing. I can't count the number of times I cursed because some networking weirdness froze up the entire shell for half a minute everytime :|
 
I'm just glad it isn't only my machine that does this. I always thought it rediculous that modern pcs, able to crunch billions of instructions per second, get crushed by just inserting a cd/dvd.

Would turning off auto-play solve this? I'm at work so I can't test this.
 
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