DW1620- Burning Problems please help!

vbimport
#1

Hi, I have just purchased a dw1620 dvdwriter. I am using tdk -r 8x disks. Burning with dvd decrypter at max speed. The burning process starts off just fine. About 5 minuites in… the write speed drops from 8x to 4x to 2x, back up to 8x etc. The red light on the burner goes from red, to green. When looking at the the burned side of the disc after the burn process, you can see there isnt a consistant burn flow. I have tried burning at 4x speed instead and the process seems better but occasionally I get the red to green blinking than back to red and the write speed goes from 4x to 3.1…2.1 and than back up to 4x. During playback mode the dvd pauses (sort of like skips). Am I doing something wrong? Bad media? Do I need to flash my burner? Current firmware reads G7C9. Could my computer be to slow? I have a pentium 3 500. Could there be something wrong with the burner itself?

Please help as I am new to all this dvd burning stuff…
Thanks!

#2

in my opinion your cpu speed is slow…minimum system requirements are PENT III or ATHLON PROCESSOR 800MHZ for the BENQ 1620…try to flash your drive to the latest firmware which is G7P9…try using DVD+R media and burn at 4x speed…nothing is wrong with the burner…your cpu is too slow for this drive… :wink:

PLEXTOR 708A DVDRW
PIONEER 107D DVDRW
LITEON 811 DVDRW
BENQ 1620 DVDRW (2)
TOSHIBA (2)1612 DVD-ROM
PLEXTOR 48X24X48 CDRW
PENT 4 HT 3.00C, 800 FSB, PENT 4 2.40 533 FSB
ASUS MOBO’s P4P800SE (2)
1GB CRUCIAL PC3200 MEMORY, 1GB CRUCIAL PC2700
WESTERN DIGITAL 36GB RAPTOR HARD DRIVE
MAXTOR 200 GB HARD DRIVE
MAXTOR (2)250 GB HARD DRIVEs
MAXTOR 200 GB SATA HARD DRIVE
MAXTOR (2)120 GB HARD DRIVEs
MAXTOR 60 GB HARD DRIVE
ANTEC TRUE POWER 480 WATT POWER SUPPLY
ANTEC TRUE POWER 430 WATT POWER SUPPLY
ANTEC SLK2650 CASE, ANTEC SLK2600AMB CASE
CANOPUS ADVC-100 ANALOG TO DIGITAL CONVERTER
MAXTOR ATA -133 PCI CONTROLLER CARDS

#3

I agree in that the drive could be having problems transfering the data to the drive. I would suggest trying a simulation of writing with buffer under-run turned off (make sure you ONLY do a simulation), this will tell you if your PC can keep up the data flow by failing when the buffer runs out.

Also get hold of CD/DVD speed (do a search on the forums for a thread) and do a burst test to check that the drive can transfer data at the speeds neccessary.

#4

Flash to the latest firmware and do a Qscan of your media and burn it with the recommended speed!

#5

Welcome :slight_smile:
Make shure DMA is switched on. Put burner and source harddisk on different IDE busses to avoid collisions.
How much RAM do you have ?

#6

The varying speed is the coaster prevention at work preventing a buffer underrun. This is usually seen when burning from a file(s) onboard a very fragmented hard drive.
My Athlon 2800 with WD Caviar 7200 rpm combination will do the exact same thing until the hard drive is defragmented.
The behavior can also be caused by a virus, virus scanner, NortonProtectedRecycleBin, and by IDE installation issues.

#7

a couple of thoughts that may help. as someone previously mentioned, try to defrag the drive. Also run scandisk after that. Running norton windoctor {if you have it} helps fix other errors. I would also suggest running Adaware and Spybot search and destroy to get rid of any spyware which may be slowing your computer down. Lastly, but not least i would suggest pressing Control + Alt + Delete and seeing what you have running in the background. Shut down whichever processes you don’t really need and you should get an immediate boost in resources.