Burning DVD with Nero--read buffer often drops to 0%

gamepyrate · Post by **gamepyrate** » Sat Oct 29, 2005 3:50 am

I don't quite understand this problem, but it's been happening with several of these computers at work when trying to burn to my external DVD burner (BenQ EW162I with 47P9 w/ RPC1 firmware, also tried with stock 47N9 firmware). Essentially, every time I start to burn a DVD with Nero at 8x or above, the read buffer intermittently lowers to 0%, thus causing the burn to stop for a few seconds until it goes back to 100%, then repeats the process again. The computer is a Dell Optiplex GX270, basically a 3.0Ghz Intel 635 chipset with 1024mb of PC 3200 RAM. It should be fast enough for a 16x burner, even though I'm only trying to burn at 8x, but it doesn't seem to be.
I have isntalled the newest chipset drivers for this motherboard.
Yet still, the read buffer continually lowers to 0%, thus making a burn at 8x take twice as long.
The CPU is not being dominated by anything, normally not going over 30% while burning, and the memory is also aplenty, with at least 512mb free.

Anybody have any advice on this? I like to burn DVD's while at work.

Pernundel · Post by **Pernundel** » Sat Oct 29, 2005 4:26 am

Do you have DMA enabled?

Post by **Karlsweldt** » Sat Oct 29, 2005 6:19 am

How much free contingent space is on the "C" drive? This is where the buffer for the burn is paged, and if the drive needs to be defragged or cleaned, you will have burn problems. You would need at least 1 Gb of free space on the "C" drive for a good-performing system. If burning a DVD, ensure at least a 2 Gb free space! The Windows "swap" file and the page file need room to breathe, also.

Smurfcorpse · Post by **Smurfcorpse** » Sat Oct 29, 2005 9:04 am

Does the burner and HD share the same IDE channel. I read somewhere they should be on different channels.

gamepyrate · Post by **gamepyrate** » Sat Oct 29, 2005 7:09 pm

Ah yes. Sorry I forgot to say all the stuff I knew. Yes, DMA is enabled from what I could see by going to Dev Mgr and looking at the IDE channels, the HD is Ultra DMA 5, the two dvd-roms are Ultra DMA 2, and I looked at the controller for the USB but I don't think USB has DMA, does it? Maybe that is the problem if so. Since the burner is external, USB 2.0.

I normally don't like to think that all problems are related to disk fragmentation, but I guess it is a possibility, that all the computers here are fairly fragmented. I will defragment one and try it again. But I'm just copying DVD to the hard drive and then burning it straight, so there is going to be some fragmentation, unless I defragged after every rip...

The drives have several gigs available, with a 1gig swap file. So that shouldn't be a problem...

Post by **evasive** » Sat Oct 29, 2005 10:00 pm

External burner as an USB one not connected to one of the USB 2.0 ports? If I'm right not all USB ports on the GX270 are 2.0 there's some 1.1 too....