812@832s CG5G

Okay... Here's a snapshot of the 1693S+Nvid 2.6's... though it avg'd out to be 3.8x the speed graph is horrendous (or is it supposed to look like that?)

@ V12lV12
Well at least you know it is not the burner that is bad. With the OK transfer rate tests, you know it isn't a bad HDD. Just more guesses...it could be loose or bad cables(it's always good to check for tightness) or maybe even a power supply unit going bad...strange problem. Another thing you could play with, though I am not highly confident of success is...You could try making these 4 entries either all version 4.71 or version 4.60...version 4.60 is known as the more compatible version...you can get what you need here.

You could also try to run memtest to test your memory.

Your sig says your are overclocked...have you tried going back to stock speed, or checked your memory:fsb ratios? I am assuming you know what you are doing OC-wise, but I am just throwing out some ideas...please don't be insulted

Thanks for continuing to post your progress

--Okay I just did for ASPI and the burn times went down considerably, and I'm not quite sure it's attributable to this new ASPI or just shear luck, but I would consider 16:29 Vs 15:34 a big diff, near a full minute change.

-- I have tried memtest86 and ran for nearly 8hrs with no errors showing at all and that's OC'd and stock FSB settings.

-- Okay I just tried a stock FSB burn and the results were just about the same as OC'd give or take a some secs and the performace graphs are nearly the same also, so I don't think that is effecting the results. Btw my mem ratio is at auto/ 1:1 atm.

--No, thank YOU for posting to help solve my problem, and there's nothing offensive by you throwing in ideas, abot whether I'm competent or not. I'd rather have my errors made visible, than keep making them over and over in arrogance

Here are some graphs from the ASPI and FSB changes, they for the most part are equal, cept the ASPI change.

*Random question* If you manage to find a little bit of free time, can you try to copy from one hard drtive to another, and then back again, using Total Copy ? Maybe we could find out if it is only limited to burning DVDs/CDs from the hard drive, or if it also spans hard drive to hard drive transfers. I would suggest using a large ISO file or something, as it will show a truer transfer rate than when copying many individual small files. (The program shows how fast the files get copied in kilobytes per second, I believe.)

AH HAA! I have found something! During my DVD ISO transfer from my 2 diff HDs, both capable of ~50M avg transfers, I noticed that the burst rate would fly up to around 26M/s, and then vary from 18M-26.6M.... after a short platuea it would dramatically fall to a dismal ~2M/s and then vary from 2-13M/s... Eventually ramping back up to the mid 20M/s. I thought it could be this little memory freeing prog I was using so I turned it off and tried again - SAME results. And these results, if you were to visualize it are JUST like my DVD burning, High burst, short sustain times, then peaking burn speeds/patueas until the burn is completed.
So... there is apparently a driver/OS/Bus transfer issue rather than software/hardware (I assume since all my tests haven't found any of the typical signs of HD/Mem failure(s) )

-- I am going to change the data cable and see if that is the issue. I hope that's all it is. I really do need to junk these POS Pata HD's and got a nice Sata OS HD.... not that there's much wrong with Pata, but it's slower, laggish and BLUKY cables

(btw that's a great little program. I like the whole Pause idea, something M$ should have incorporated into XP itself, insead of having to be fulling commited to a large transfer etc...)

Not sure if this is random or b/c of the fresh restart, but my transfers did go up with the newer rounded cable I installed: 26.666 Vs ~34.xxxM/s - but again the same pattern

High burst-->Plateau-->Slight droppage-->Complete DIVE-->Slight Platuea-->Speed Increase back to 30's---> Repeat Cycle till transfer End >.<

It's like some kind of buffering depletion, then a fill and speeds rise. But what buffer (if) it is I don't know?

I have come into this thread late and haven't read all the previous posts. Are you running Windows XP with SP2 and auto update turned on.

I had problems with my previous machine when I had auto update on, my machine seemed to run like a dog.

Just my 2 cents worth

Okay... I think I've found the issue... Using total-copy, I found drive to drive transfers cyclic but fast... BUT from Partition to partition (OS/data) the transfer speeds are HORRIBLE... nothing more than ~11M/s and that's peak, not sustained. And it's showing up on both drives I have partitioned. From the OS to the Data partition the transfers SUCK.... I hope I don't have to nuke something just for some DVDburning, It wouldn't be a quick experiment either.....

Another possibility: I have my auto defragger setup to defrag the data partitions with space in mind and the OS partitions for Access/name IE it arranges system files by name, making boot times faster and future defragging much faster.... I might have to re-defrag back to a transfer friendly profile...

@ V12lV12
I am not sure you are on to something here...you are seeing what I would expect when reading and writing from the same HDD or from one HDD to another HDD on the same IDE channel. This is what I thought might have been your problem before, that your source HDD was on the same IDE channel as your burner, but your infotool showed me that was not the case. Certainly transfering from one partition on a HDD to another partition on the same HDD, you are going to get poor transfer rate performance. I am glad you did swap out your cables and that has eliminated that as a possible cause(or at least very unlikely).

Since you have several burning programs installed, I would recommend uninstalling all software burning programs using Nero general clean tool for nero removal, running the Nero driver clean tool and registry checker(same link) after that.
Then choose one burning program which you like best, and install it and try a burn. If that works, you can either go with that one only, or try to install another one and see if you have problems. I would recommend Nero, but that is just my preference. Let us know how it goes.

Turning off the 'auto-defrag' would be a good idea, and just defrag manually, but often.

---Yeah I never put HD's and slower running drives on the same cable. The only exception is my 2 HDs on the same cable, the Western at Pata 100 and the Maxtor Pata at 133, so bottle necking shouldn't be an issue, esp since I tested by running only the Main OS drive (Maxtor) single channel and the speeds didn't change. Poor, I would expect but in the order of 2M-5M/s is just ridiculously slow TOo slow

---I will give that a try, maybe there is some kind of driver conflict (I hope that's it.)

---Well my "auto" defrag isn't set to run continuously in the back ground. I have it set to run only when the drive reaches a specific frag setting and only on odd days. I'd never attempt to do burn a DVD with defrag on lol.

@ V12lV12
Just another thought, as I am running out of ideas. Have you tried running some sort of anti-spybot software, like Ad-aware, in case there is something in the background running or trying to 'phone home' while you are trying to burn?

You have been pretty thorough in all the things you have tried. As I see it(IMHO) you have eliminated the burner, cables and some software/drivers as the cause. Also IMHO, you have a motherboard/chipset issue or a dying HDD issue or other obscure software/driver issues left to troubleshoot. I am a bit confused about the dying-HDD theory because the transfer rate rise-and-fall problem similar to the burn rise-and-fall that you experienced happens to BOTH HDDs, not just one. I doubt that both HDD would die at the same time in the same way. That would point more towards MB/chipset or software/drivers. Any chance you could borrow or buy a new HDD to use as a source for a few tests? Its about the only piece of equipment you haven't swapped out yet. If you go with SATA, tho, it may work OK, but not pinpoint or solve the IDE problem, it would just work around it. If you could move your non-OS HDD and burner(with your cables) to a new MB/system to test them. That would help eliminate those as problem sources.

I hope reinstalling nero solves your problem

--- Yeah I've got Spysweeper and Kaspersky running and I never get spyware, well I take that back, very rarily do I, and afaik I don't have any atm...

---Okay, I uninstalled/reinstalled Nero and alcohol - there are some much better results: I copied the same DVD ISO to my other HD and burnt, speeds AND the buffering were not an issue at all. I nice predictable burn. THough the avg speed 4.6x was .6x faster than what the maximum of the RW disc lists, why I don't know, but Oh well...
Now for the main OS/Data partition HD. That burn also ended up AVG'ing 4.1x, which is good, BUT the whole buffering graph looks completely diff - in that it mimics the graphs from pre-uninstall of said software... None the less the burn speed is where it should be... I wish I had some kind of 8x RW media to test with, for I don't feel like wasteing +R's for all this... I'm going to try and burn 8x and see how things go.
So... now that 4x speeds have been, I assume cleared up, now I'll have to try 8x and see if the buffering nonsense is still there. I can SEE the finshline folks!!!

On an completely off topic note... F'ing Cheap as$ LiteOn taking away the multi-colored LED for the post 832S drives! ERRR this ugly green light is just killing me! I'm thinking about swapping it out for a solid red light.... a GREEN light for burning? Green doesn't denote ANY kind of "heat" aka "burning" a disc... etc.

---

Last edited by V12|V12; 11-08-2005 at 07:33. Reason: Forgot to UL pics!

Well folks, I have exhausted every option I can think of, aside from a full clean system install... which I'm not going to do for a mere hunch and maybe a couple extra minutes reduced from burn times... so far my best DVD ISO burn time is with Nero @11:16, with the HD file caching off, and a 71M buffer. It could be the media, so I'm about to cough up the cash and order some Taiyo Yuden 16x... hopefully it's the media and not my stupid system.....?

Well, here is my latest and most disturbing looking performance graph while burning with alcohol... 5x avg - 12:46 - and strange graph at 71M buffering... Maybe I'll drop it to 50M and see if that makes any diff.... I HATE this... lol