Burner stops/starts again while writing

I have recently installed a Samsung SH-W162Z to replace an aging Lite-On 411S. I have both hooked up now and the Lite-On is still working fine, but I am having trouble with the Samsung. While writing the lite on the burner stops blinking for one to two seconds, the speed goes way down, and the buffers go nuts multiple times. Playability is fine despite these problems, but takes much longer than it should. I have the latest firmware, believe I hooked it up properly, and am writing at the proper speed for the burner/media. The problem is present on all software I have tried, Decrypter/ImgBurn, Alcohol 120%, and nero.

Can anyone help me out?

 

When hooking up 2 burrners you really want the burrner that your going to use for burning to be at the end of the IDE cable.

So if you have the 2 DVD burrners on the same cable you need to set the 1 you will do most of your burning with to master and then set the other burrner to slave.

Now place the DVD you set to master and will be doing most of your burning with at the end of the cable. Then place the 1 that you have as slave in the center of the cable.

Also you could check the DMA/PIO settings on the drives themselves. To do this look below.

Check and make sure the drive is in DMA mode and not in PIO mode. To do this do the below.

Start/Control Panel/System/Hardware Tab/ Click on the Device Manager button

Now when the next window comes up look through the list for IDE Controllers. Click on that and it will branch out below with all your IDE channels. Check each channel and see if they are in DMA mode. If any are in PIO mode try to switch it to DMA mode.

If it wont let you switch to DMA mode then right click on that IDE channel and choose to uninstall it. Then restart your computer and it should reinstall into DMA mode.

I would guess that the buffer and the burrner slowing down is due to your drive being in PIO mode and not DMA mode. So make sure you check and see if they are in DMA mode.

 

Thanks for responding so quickly. The Samsung drive was set up as the master and all the IDE controllers were set to DMA mode.

Any other ideas?

 

Set to DMA and being in DMA are different things. Are you saying all the drives were in DMA when you checked? PIO settings usually make a drastic change in speed instead of wild buffer spurts.

 

Make sure the firmware is updated on the DVD drive. Make sure you have all other programs closed. Even programs that work in the background need to be closed.

What burning software are you using? Do you have more then 1 burning software installed? (Nero/Roxio, etc etc)

If so you need to uninstall all burning software and get clean tools to make sure all burning software files are cleaned out plus registery. Then re-install only 1 of the burning programs. Roxio and Nero can conflict.

Even if you have 1 burning software try to uninstall it and go to the website of what ever burning software you have and download clean tools and uninstall and clean out all drivers/registery files. Then reinstall the program.

Just a few things you could try.

 

I tried your ideas, but still no luck. Since I'm still under warrenty, I'll just send the burner back and try again. Thanks for the help.

 

My replacement came, but I am still having the same problem. I also tried disconnecting the other burner and replacing the IDE cable. The problem always starts at the same exact speed every time, when I hit 7.1 everything goes haywire. I should also mention that I am using an old budget computer (hp pavilion a300n) with everything stock except RAM and the drives.

Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

try slowing down the burn speed to 4x and see if that helps . you will notice a big difference in your buffer rate if your running good quality ram and at least one full gig. or your memory may be going or is bad ,

 

I tried burning at 4X and the drive still stuttered. I ran a disc quality scan and it was horrible.

 

since you have tryed two different drives with the same problem i would say its time to upgrade to a better PC ,sounds like the one you have is shot

 

like said is DMA on?

is your ASPI layer installed ok?

but could just be not enough ram etc? running too many processes in the background? making it fluctuate

 

So far about all we know is that a Lite-On 411S was replaced by a Samsung SH-W162Z. The problem appears to be a slowdown in operation. What operation, read, burn or both? Since Nero was mentioned, a Nero burn log would be handy. That would give us some drive, dma, and media info. We don't even know what media is being used, if it's a burn problem. Besides that info, some system specs and the model PC would be informative.

That is a judgment, not a measurement. How long for what operations? (Speed depends a lot on system resources, condition, and settings). It was never confirmed DMA was on, just that is was attempted to be set.