Please Help: SH-S203D Very Slow Burns

Hi All,

I got a Samsung SH-S203D a couple of weeks back, and I have been experiencing really slow burns with it on both DVDs & CDs

Mainboard - Mercury PNMCP73V
SATA Controller - nVidia nForce 610i

The problem: No matter what speed I set, and what software I use, the drive is unable to burn at more than 4X for DVDs and 20-24X for CDs.

The simulation in Nero Discspeed or ImgBurn TestMode goes fine and says the media can be burned at 12X or 16X for DVD (48X for CDs), but when I start the actual burn, it goes fine for about 20 sec before the burn speed drops suddenly and then continues only at 4X for DVDs and 20-24X for CDs. Please see images of simulation and burn in the next post.

Discs I have tried so far:
CD-R = Verbatim, Sony, Samsung
DVD-R = Taiyo Yuden (TYG02)
DVD+R = Ricoh R03 (Office Depot Brand), Taiyo Yuden (Fujifilm - YUDEN000T02)

Burn Software I tried: Nero 6, ImgBurn, InfraRecorder

Other things I tried to solve this problem:
- Change SATA mode from AHCI to IDE with default microsoft drivers.
- Check, re-check and check again that the DMA is enabled. (It is. The HDD is in UDMA6 and the SH-S203D in UDMA5).
- Change the SATA cable.
- Change the SATA port. (Currently the HDD is on SATA1 and the S203D on SATA2 - they are on two different buses).
- Upgrade the drive firmware from SB00 to SB01

Nothing helped me - the drive behaves the exact same way in all these set-ups. All I have is a pile of CDs & DVDs that I have wasted on the tests... well not exactly wasted. Some of them work fine, but some of them show unrecoverable errors in the quality scans

I'd appreciate any tips or pointers to what the problem might be

Thanks.

Attached here three images.

1. Showing the simulation of a CD-R at 48X

2. Showing the actual burn of the same disc. Notice the dip in speed after 5% or so and then it flattens at 24X. This is the Samsung CD-R. The Sony CD-R burns only at 16X. The Verbatim CD-Rs burn at around 24X but most of them are unreadable after the burn.

3. The quality scan of the disc after the burn. This one has no C2 errors, but some have C2 errors at the point where the speed dip happened.

Seems as if the OPC has switched burn strategy for that disc.
CD-R scans done with Samsung (and Liteon) DVD writers are useless.

Have you already tried this:
Leave the Sata configuration in BIOS as IDE, and install latest Nvidia drivers (from nvidia.com, not from the mainboard manufacturer).

In order to rule out a bad drive, you might also try the drive in another computer (if that is not VIA chipset based)

Michael

Yep. Have the latest nVidia drivers. Un-installed and re-installed then twice to make sure there is no problem at that end.

Anyway, the nforce 610i chipset uses default MS drivers in IDE mode. The nvidia driver kicks-in only in AHCI or RAID modes. Verified this at the nvidia forums.

I've also tried setting the drive to PIO and rebooting a couple of times and then reset it to DMA and reboot a couple of times. Read somewhere that this sometime helps in removing "stuck PIO" mode. Didn't help me though.

Yeah, thats next on my list. Problem is my other PC is ages old and doesn't have a SATA interface. And my wife's PC has the exact same config as mine (bought & built them together). Have to see if a friend will oblige.

I have an external SATA HDD. Would it work if I took out the HDD and plug-in the S203D to test it as an external burner?

Thanks for responding.

Cheers.

Hi,Okay then.

Another idea: Please do a simulated DVD-R burn. You need a DVD-R disc since simulation is not supported on DVD+R media.
If the curve is smooth, then I wouldn't expect some interface issue.

Maybe it's the HDD, that starts to fail. You should check that. You could also do a read test using HDTune.

And installing the drive in your wife's computer might be also helpful to sort out issues that are related to your own system.

This is another option to be tried out.


Michael

it's a problem of your Power supply unit
i had the same problem and since i changed my PSU every thing has gone right

Guys I am recently having the same problem with my Samsung Burner SH-S203D

Whenever I start burning a DVD, it starts off showing 15 mins countdown and reaches zero until it again starts from 15 or 10 mins and the burn speed is really slow.

I started burning with 4x speed and even tried with 16x but the result is the same and at 16x the disc corrupts. I have tried all kinds of disc but no help.

I have a
Intel 915 GAV motherboard
SATA Samsung DVD burner

Pls guys help me I am not sure what to do..

P.S. I have a ASUS burner which runs normally but the Samsung one recently showed this problem.

Thanks in advance.

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Last edited by mciahel; 15-11-2008 at 00:23. Reason: added a comma

Hi and Welcome!could you please give more details? Especially about the software that is used. THis 15 min countdown is really confusing.
Check DMA please:
http://club.cdfreaks.com/f61/trouble...-me-9x-101616/

Please also tell us, how the Sata controller is configured in Bios. IDE mode should be fine.

Michael