Abysmal read speed on 52x drive

CD, DVD and (Ultra HD) Blu-ray Writers
#1

I’m trying to rip audio CDs with my Samsung SW-252F 52x/32x/52x CD-R/RW drive, and the best speeds I can attain are a pathetic 3x. Nero CD Speed gives me a read rating of less than 4x on average. Device Manager reports DMA is enabled (UDMA 2 – Ultra 33). Firmware is the latest. This drive is the master on the secondary IDE channel, and I have an old DVD-ROM as the slave. I thought the slave may be slowing down the data on the channel (though I was not ripping and burning on the fly; the slave was not in use at all), so I disconnected it but it made no difference. I’ve also tried the same configuration on the primary IDE channel, but again to no avail.

Any ideas? This is driving me nuts.

#2

Try:

  • reapplying new firmware and/or trying an OLDER firmware version
  • cleaning the lens (using a ‘wet’ cleaner)
  • using different ripping software
  • can you use a different OS? (eg dual boot)

All of the above have helped me out on separate occasions.
Hope that helps,
Dan