DW1640 = Very Slow Read Speed!

[ninjastyle]

Hi. I've owned a benQ DW1640 for a few years, bought shortly after it was released, and up until recently it has been flawless. I really love this drive. About a week ago I upgraded my board and CPU to an Intel E8600 and an Asus P5Q-E, and yesterday I copied a bunch of data (3.17GB) from an old DVD backup disc I had. Well, this seemed to take a very long time, so today I tried again and timed it. This took 18 minutes 26 seconds. I think I might know the problem -- I can't get the Intel Matrix Storage Driver to install on my board. This is a common problem, apparently, and after trying to fix it today with a guide I found online, I ended up trashing Windows. I forced the driver to install, then upon rebooting, I got BSOD's every time.

Does anyone agree that the fact that the driver won't install is the problem here? I don't really want to have to purchase another drive (money is tight) but if necessary I will get a SATA DVD rewriter. If anyone has any advice for me I'd greatly appreciate it. What are the best SATA drives to consider? Or do you know a way to get this driver installed? Currently I am using the stock XP driver which I never had a problem with before, but I guess this motherboard doesn't wanna play.

[ninjastyle]

No one knows? I thought you guys were the pro’s?

[labo_2000]

for the advice :
number 1- plextor if possible
number 2 - pioneer
number 3 - samsung SH-S20x series

[ninjastyle]

Thank you. Plextor is usually a little outside my price range. Are there any particular Pioneer models I should look out for?

[geno888]

Probably the disc is a bit ruined (dirty, scratched or you used a low quality disc that after some time become difficult to read, typical of Ritek media for example).

Another possibility is that DMA is not enabled. After a fresh install it is a frequent issue. Check and enable DMA for all IDE drives drive

I also suggest to get rid of the Intel Matrix drive. It’s basically useless, and as you already noticed it causes a lot of problems.

About the Pioneer drives, bear in mind that by factory the ripping speed of these drives is locked, so if you are searching for a fast ripping drive you must unlock the drive first (this require the installation of an unofficial drive that invalidate warranty, but this has been done by hundreds of people here and it’s a safe procedure :))

Another thing you should do is check that the PSU is sufficient. Even if the E8600 is a 65W CPU, it is possible that your PSU is not enough powerful to run correctly the system.

[Anthony1uk]

[QUOTE=ninjastyle;2117514]Are there any particular Pioneer models I should look out for?[/QUOTE]
If you can find it DVR-216, if not the older DVR-215.

Or you could get an Optiarc 7200s, or a lite-on IHAS120.

The lite-on would be good if you need to continue to do disk quality scanning in Nero Drivespeed which the benq was famous for.

[alan1476]

[quote=ninjastyle;2117101]Hi. I’ve owned a benQ DW1640 for a few years, bought shortly after it was released, and up until recently it has been flawless. I really love this drive. About a week ago I upgraded my board and CPU to an Intel E8600 and an Asus P5Q-E, and yesterday I copied a bunch of data (3.17GB) from an old DVD backup disc I had. Well, this seemed to take a very long time, so today I tried again and timed it. This took 18 minutes 26 seconds. I think I might know the problem – I can’t get the Intel Matrix Storage Driver to install on my board. This is a common problem, apparently, and after trying to fix it today with a guide I found online, I ended up trashing Windows. I forced the driver to install, then upon rebooting, I got BSOD’s every time.

Does anyone agree that the fact that the driver won’t install is the problem here? I don’t really want to have to purchase another drive (money is tight) but if necessary I will get a SATA DVD rewriter. If anyone has any advice for me I’d greatly appreciate it. What are the best SATA drives to consider? Or do you know a way to get this driver installed? Currently I am using the stock XP driver which I never had a problem with before, but I guess this motherboard doesn’t wanna play.[/quote]
First of all disconnect the drive and make sure its the drive that is giving you the BSODs. Then if it is try changing your ide ribbon, you could also check your UDMA Mode , it should be in UDMA 2.

[Bob]

yeah i would try to do what geno888 and Alan said before you call it quits.

[ninjastyle]

Thank you all for the replies.

Geno: It’s a 500W Tagan modular PSU. It’s quite a powerful and good quality unit.

I’ve decided to get a Samsung SH-203, it seems to be a very popular drive. It’s also one I installed in a quad core system I recently built for a friend and I was impressed with it.

Alan, thanks for the info. I’m not sure if it’s in UDMA 2, but I’ll go check that in a sec and set it to the right mode if it isn’t. Cheers again.