i have 4 16x burners using nero 6 but i have an outstanding number of buffer under run i want to keep a max 96-100% on all burners can some one help i have 2ghz processor 512 ddr ram 2100 all ultra dma tdk cd-rw's i would like to switch to 4 dvd-rw's
The quickest and cheapest thing you can try is to start slowing the burn speed down in increments for all your drives to see if you can eliminate you under runs. In anticipation of burning 4 DVDs at a time? Burning one DVD at a time hogs up all of a system's resources so when we find Jimmy Hoffa we'll ask him how to do four at a time
2 at a time works pretty well if going from one image to 2 DVDs. I haven't tried 4 DVDs yet but If you had enough IDE controller channels and bandwidth it should work. Achohol 120% works well for controlling the burners. You can also burn 2 images to 2 DVDs usings 2 instances of DVDdecrypter if you have the harddrive speed.
Burning two at a time may work but if he's having buffer underruns doing CDs, he's going to need some serious system upgrades to accomplish that.
i have 8 ide channels. do you all think i need to upgrade my ram from 512mb to 2gb i guess.2100 or 2700? and thanx 4 trying to help my out
I use dual proc server boards. Athlon and P3s. The extra proc helps smooth the load and the 64 bit PCI bus gives extra bandwidth on the IO side. One proc may have difficulty running 4 DVDs even with DMA. If you stick with your present setup then you should bump the proc speed as well as memory.
I have a question myself - 8 IDEs are nice.. but would a couple/handful of USB 2.0 external burners work just as well?
Regardless of the number of internal or external drives you can connect, there is still a finite amount of bandwidth/resources your PC can supply. Burning a DVD consumes a huge amount of these resources. Take my system for example: P4 3.06 1024MB PC2100 2 X 80GB RAID 0 Hard Disks I have a fast processor, plenty of RAM and fast RAID 0 hard drive setup yet when I burn a DVD I leave it alone to do it's thing - no surfing, no playing solitaire.....nothing. I want an accurate burn, not errors from screwing around with my PC while it needs all it's resources. There are those that love to push the limits and that's fine for them, but I'm not willing to sacrifice quality just so I can say I did X amount of discs at the same time. djrikki2, I can appreciate that you, as a dj, would like to make as many discs as you can in a short amount of time, but burning DVDs means transferring way more data at a time than CDs so all I can do is let you know that with your current setup having problems handling 4 CDs at a time, 2 DVDs in my estimation is out of the question. If you want to try it then go for it but expect many problems such as bad or incomplete burns. Hope this helps
Burning 2 DVDs uses about 10% of my proc so the extra speed is just for in case. each IDE channel is good for 100-133 MBs bandwidth and you only need 5.5 for a 4X burn. The PCI is the only real bottleneck and it should have enough bandwitdh for 4 DVDs although I haven't tried this yet. A 64 bit PCI bus and controller would eliminate that bottleneck. You can do as much as you want but you need a machine that can support it. Making 4 coasters at a time is a definite concern so know the risks. _ _X_X_X_X_X_[small]Donald[/small]
He's not using a dual proc server board so I don't quite get the point of telling him that. He's using a 2ghz proc with 512 BG RAM.
I have just tested my new machine with 3 burners. 2 burners on 1 IDE channel and a USB2 burner. Alcohol 120% burned 3 DVDs at 4X with none of the buffers getting low. All 3 are clean playing DVDs. Slim specs to start with. 2 procs at 1.47 ghz 256 megs of ram 9 gig scsi main drive plus a 120 WD for the image storage. It never went above 15% CPU usage. I figure if you set the P4 up right 4 burners would run fine. Just make sure you have Ultra DMA working on all the drives. Check in the device manager under the IDE controller properties. Windows can screw you on this. If the CPU usage goes high then DMA is off on a drive. This will cause buffer underruns in a hurry.
Thanks for the input, guys... i appreciate it! I only ask cuz after being spoiled with a few hundred backups of my movies using my desktop-encased burners, I am now moving towards my laptop and backup my movies through its USB connection and external versions of my burners. Thanks again, guys! `angelo
