Recent slowing of my 4x burns with Nero ISO's

Glad to see you got it all sorted out. Only rebutal I might have is that flat IDE cable's are not any better than the round IDE cable's as long as both are 80 wire cable's. Your original round cable may have just gone bad or it may be that it is only a 40 wire cable. It is actually proven that there is less interferiance from the round cables than the flat. Reason being is that the round cables are also shielded by some sort of rubber around all the cables protecting it from other interferiance, not to mention they keep your system cooler which makes for overall system performance to improve. The main point should be if you want your drives to performe at there maximum potential then use the 80 wire/40 pin cable's.

Here is a little more I wrote on this subject in another thread

Again glad to see you got it worked out jugbugs

 

Two things, one, my drives were and are set to master and slave and are not set to cable select. Secondly, I don''t want to get into a debate here but I found a webpage about the round vs flat.

http://www.a1-electronics.net/PcHardware/GenCompInfo/2002_3/IDECables.shtml

Making a cable flat, without going into transmission line theory from my electromagnetics book, and putting a ground between allows for linearty and consistancy between the data lines. This is very important for high speeds to prevent crosstalk. Taking all 40 data lines and 40 ground lines and stuffing them into a round channel negates the point of having 80 wires (as 40 of them are virtually useless). However, if there was a round IDE cable manufacturer that didn't just use a rubber coating and used something similar to coaxial then it could be argued that round is better, and consequently more expensive.

Again thanks to all who helped me!

 

http://www.slcentral.com/articles/01/6/flatvsround/print.php

http://mikhailtech.com/articles/other/roundide/

OK I can provide links also that say the round cables are better. So what is the point? I just gave my opinion and I have been building and testing computer systems for 14 years now so what do I know? Take a round 80 wire 40 pin cable apart one day and you will see that it is shielded just as good if not better than the flat IDE cable they are not just stuffed together as you say. In one of those links provided he actually did the airflow test with the flat versus round cable and the differents is pretty dramatic. I myself when switched to the round cables was able to lower my system temp 5 deg C thats pretty significant IMO.. I know you didnt want a debate but you got one LOL

 

I wasn't talking about data transfer speed, I was mearly talking about interference. They will obviously be comparable.

Since you are a tech you will have an oscilloscope. Use that oscilloscope and check to see which cable type has more crosstalk between data lines.

As for case cooling, I thought that it would help my case too. But any adequately cooled case will not see much if any of a difference in case temperature. When I put my roundies in I didn't see any difference, both with a stand alone sensor and the onboard. Now, with that being said, if you have a case that really needs the room and benefits substantially than I would most definatly use the round ones. Not to mention they look neat , but then again so do my black and silver ASUS flat IDE's.

http://www.extremeoverclocking.com/reviews/misc/Round_Cables_1.html

 

I would?? You have to be kidding me right?? I would use that for what purpose when buiding computers?

If your theory were correct that would mean your flat IDE cable never cross's or touches another cable in your PC.. I highly doubt that in fact the flat cables in your system more than likely are folded over somewhere or cross each other somewhere in the system. So how would you account for that cross talk just out of curiosity. You see the round cables are much more flexible and can be tucked away from all the interferance.
Now I have run some software burst tests and such with each cable installed, and to be honest there was absolutly no difference in speed or data transfer rate. So I am back to my original opinion in this manner and that is to just make sure you get the 80(wire) 40(pin) cable, but the round will keep your system cooler regardless of the case size. Also there are some cheap round cables that are just stuffed together, but if you do a little research you can find some good ones.. http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=12-105-010&depa=1

Peace

 

Let’s think about this for a minute shall we?

When was the last time that there was a thread here in Afterdawn.com on round cables effecting anyone’s PC? We do have over 300,000 members here and I am sure that this would have come up before if it was a serious problem.

When did we hear of anyone on any website talk about problems with round cables, warning us not to purchase them?

In an 80 wire ribbon, round or flat there are 40 wires as direct grounding leads to prevent crosstalk. Electricity ALWAYS takes the path of least resistance, so what is a “greater resistance”, a direct grounding lead per matched ribbon wire, or possible feedback through inductive reactance? Maybe if there was a lot of moisture in the case that might have some effect, but not usually the case.

I have three PC’s and one Laptop, two PC’s with Round Cables and one with flat ribbons. I have no problems with any of them. As you see by my specs in my signature, I like speed, having a CPU over-clocked at 3.74GHz, and by all accounts its running pretty good! So when or if there are more articles written on why I shouldn’t use round cables any longer, I’ll take heed, but until then, they are staying. Not because of better cooling, but only because they look great! <G>

 

LMAO!!! Yeah that tooo

 

BBMayo does make a good point about folding the ribbon upon itself. I was also not saying no one should buy them, I also have three PCs all with round cables in them one way or another. Round cables obviously work.

My comment is not false but you will continue to argue it either way. I will leave it at that as I didn't and don't want to have a dabate about this.

 

Hey im a new user just wondering if i indeed uninstall the ide controllers will i also lose my firmware?? Thanks

 

No your firmware in onboard the drive itself where as the ide controllers are windows drivers.

 

I've suffered from this intermittent slow burning for some while now. Are you saying that the I'm dropping in and out of DMA/PIO mode when this happens ? If so, is there something that I can check whilst it is happening ?

 

There are so many reasons that your burning has slowed and almost all have been covered in this thread. Just read the post's... Here are some of the reasons..

1. Drivers/Firmware. Are they all up to date?
2. Clean the DVD recorder lens. There are comercial products out there.
3. Make sure your operating system is running smoothly
4. Check for Spyware/Adware and clean system.
5. What programs are always running in the background? Turn them off.
6. Any packet writing software (InCD) get rid of it!
7. Media?? Use quality media. TaiyoYuden, FujiFilm, Sony ect. Stay away from generic, memorex brands.
8. Make sure burner is set to DMA if available. To really make sure uninstall your IDE channels in device manager and reboot.
9. Use 80 wire 40 pin IDE cable to get full use of DMA higher than 2.
10. Most mother boards only support the DMA modes 4 & 5 in one IDE slot (the blue one) Could make sure your burner is hooked up to that slot along with your master hard drive. If your lucky and have newer mobo then both your IDE controllers will support Ultra DMA 4 & 5..
11. Defrag your hard drive frequently.

So there are many things you can do and check to try and increase your burning time.

 

Yes - I know there are many reasons. Note that I said "intermittent". I only occasionally see this behaviour. My question was just to establish whether I would spot the DMA/PIO thing happening DURING one of those slow burns.

 

Well intermittent is odd and has nothing to do with DMA if Windows switches to PIO mode it is because it is having problem burning in DMA mode and it doesn't just switch itself back. Could be spyware or adware, or lose connection of one of your cables possiblly?

I don't know if you can actually watch while you are burning to see if the drive is in PIO or DMA mode or not, but even if you could it would be to late to do anything about it by then anyway Normally Windows will convert over to PIO mode when you have some errors while burning. If you have tried all the above mentioned things and still have the issue of intermittent slow burning it could be your writer is going on ya. Lets hope thats not the case Last resort would be to format and reload Windows..

 

Cable, schmable! One item that hasn't really been considered is that one of the hard drives may be going bad. Since the original poster had *two* drives in RAID 0 (disk mirroring), try breaking the mirror set and run off of each drive separately. See if your system runs better on one of the two. My system was getting slower and slower until I noticed the HD was getting hotter and hotter. Hello! I put in a new drive and the system now runs fast and cool.

OT: Is it my imagination or are the hard drives I'm seeing these days just getting crappier all the time? Maybe it's because the mfrs are cramming more and more capacity into the same geometry. Maybe production costs are forcing quality downwards. Whatever. I just seem to be replacing drives for me, my friends, and my co-workers almost annually.

 

ricster - The Windows switch to PIO mode, it does this after it fails (for whatever reason) to transmit at a higher speed, is transparent. If you go into the device manager during a slow burn you wont see anything different. But if windows can not get a fast burn after a long period of time it will change that setting and you will be able to see that your primary channel (or secondary) has changed to PIO mode. Since your problem is intermittent I would assume that windows wont change that setting and you wont be able to see this happening.

Now, my suggestion to you is make sure your burner is the only device on the IDE cable. If you still get poor consistency try replacing your IDE cable, 40 pin - 80 wire, if this doesn't fail keep trying one of BBMayo's suggestions (above) until you get the consistency you want. You may end up finding that your problem is not caused by any one single thing and that it will take a combination of many things to right it.

EDIT: Klezmorim - a RAID 0 array is a "Striping without Redundancy" array and it is impossible to split without a complete format reinstall. If you use a raid 0 array I would recommend periodic backups incase one HDD does go bad. Once one goes bad your data is lost on BOTH disks.

 

Jugbugs: You are correct. I was thinking of RAID 1. You'd think after 14 years in the IT industry I'd remember the difference. I guess that's why I'm in management

Anyway, regardless of whether RAID 0 or 1 is used, one dying drive can slow things down. Also, because of the lack of fault tolerance in RAID 0 as you point out, if one drive dies data is lost on BOTH dies. Switch to RAID 1. You'll sleep better at night.