Hmm...got a problem with burning multiple disks

shaolin007 2008-05-01 20:21:17 UTC #1

I have 3 DVD burners:

1x Pioneer DVR 112D 1.21 IDE
2x Liteon LH-20A1S 9L08 SATA

What I would like to do is burn different data items simultaneously with all three burners. So far, results are not good. I have tried doing this with Roxio Easy Media Creator 7.5, VSO CopytoDVD 3, and Imgburn. With Roxio, can't do it at all because it disallows multiple instances of the program. I tried its "drag to disc" function but it produced unreliable burns. CopytoDVD 3 was probably the worst of the 3, it produced two coasters on the first two DVDs I tried with it. So even though you can open multiple instances of it, it still couldn't do it. Now Imgburn, it works sort of. It made 2 out of 3 fine; but on the Pioneer drive, it locked up on and reported an error on verification. Well, at least it impressed me more than the previous two and of all things it is free.

My question is, does anyone have any recomendations for a burning program that can do this reliable or maybe something I could do?

Last, I don't understand why it has to be difficult to do this. All of the drives are on seperate channels. Could someone explain why it is so complicated to do?

_Jethro 2008-05-01 20:30:52 UTC #2

CopytoDVD4 works great!

Bob 2008-05-01 20:34:36 UTC #3

Bottle neck…you only have 1 (one) HDD.

shaolin007 2008-05-01 20:43:44 UTC #4

Shouldn’t my HDD, being SATA 3.0Gb/sec, be able to handle all the drives fine?

I’ll see if it does have a trial version of it but doesnt it use that Patin-Couffin driver like version 3 has?

Bob 2008-05-01 20:46:58 UTC #5

[QUOTE=shaolin007;2049193]Shouldn’t my HDD, being SATA 3.0Gb/sec, be able to handle all the drives fine?[/QUOTE]No, Check this thread out. We use many HDD’s and ODD’s to perform this > http://club.cdfreaks.com/f33/dare-burn-2-verb-r-dls-once-226212/

shaolin007 2008-05-01 21:36:38 UTC #6

My HDD transfer rate is 300MB/sec.

[B]DVD Read and Write Average Data Transfer Rates[/B]
(transfer rates indicated in binary notation)
DVD
Read/Write
Speed
Transfer Rate
bytes/sec
Transfer Rate
KB/sec
Transfer Rate
MB/sec
Equivalent CD-R/CD-RW
read/ write speed
1x
1,385,000
1,352.54
1.32
9x
2x
2.770,000
2,705.08
2.64
18x
3x
4,155,000
4,057.62
3.96
27x
4x
5,540,000
5,410.16
5.28
36x
5x
6,925,000
6,762.70
6.60
45x
6x
8,310,000
8,115.23
7.93
54x
8x
11,080,000
10,820.31
10.57

10x
13,850,000
13,525.39
13.21

12x
16,620,000
16,230.47
15.85

16x
22,160,000
21,640.63
21.13

So at the maximum rate of 16x, the drives are requesting and burning data at ~23MB/sec. I have 3 drives so times that by 3 and you get 69MB/sec. Still not even close to what my drive can do.

To me, it looks like a software limitation. I have extracted many compressed files(RAR) at the same time that totalled nearly 30 GB in around 15 minutes. If it can move that amount of data around in that time frame, it surely could keep up with 3 DVD drives with no problem burning single layer media. If anything, my HDD is waiting on DVD drives.

I don’t know, am I still missing something here?

Bob 2008-05-01 21:39:17 UTC #7

[QUOTE=shaolin007;2049216]I don’t know, am I still missing something here?[/QUOTE]Well we can and you cannot so…you tell me.

You cannot be using the same HDD to foot the bill…period.

shaolin007 2008-05-01 22:58:04 UTC #8

[quote=Bob;2049219]Well we can and you cannot so…you tell me.

You cannot be using the same HDD to foot the bill…period.[/quote]

Well, like I said, i was able to burn 3 at one time with Imgburn but the burn on the Pioneer wouldn’t verify afterwards. So it is not a question if I can, it is a question of what is reliable. I am going to try a couple more programs out. I’ll even try the VSO CopytoDVD 4 and see how that pans out. If I have success, I will post back here.

Bob 2008-05-01 23:01:02 UTC #9

Best way to do it is…make the images with ImgBurn/Shrink and then burn away…hint… but like i said with only one HDD that’s your bottle neck.

shaolin007 2008-05-02 06:37:18 UTC #10

Thanks for your input.

beef_barley 2008-05-02 12:16:05 UTC #11

You could also check this thread out.

http://club.cdfreaks.com/f59/burn-2-isos-same-time-241277/

shaolin007 2008-05-02 21:22:40 UTC #12

[quote=beef barley;2049651]You could also check this thread out.

http://club.cdfreaks.com/f59/burn-2-isos-same-time-241277/[/quote]

Thanks

beef_barley 2008-05-03 11:16:43 UTC #13

You are welcome.

shaolin007 2008-05-11 17:08:50 UTC #14

Just wanted you guys to know and especially Bob that I was able to backup reliably 2 data discs at once. I backed up nearly 100 GB worth of video and sound and they all burned just fine. I had to use Imgburn since the others can’t even compare. I was getting around 12-14x speed on both drives that I was using which are Lite Ons 20A1S. All data was on one HDD since it is my only HDD in my system. It is a Maxtor 3.0Gb/sec SATA HDD. I think the issue might be when I start each disc. If I wait until one disc starts burning to do the other, it seems to work better. I am going to try 3 discs again here soon and use the same technique. My first try, they all burned but the Pioneer IDE drive failed the verification phase. If I remember, they all burned around 8-10x at the time.

Here are my system specs:

Abit-USA AW9D-MAX BIOS REV. 3

Intel QX6700 Quad CPU 4 x 2.66GHZ

4GB Corsair CAS 5 RAM DDR2 800

Maxtor 6h500F0 500GB HDD SATA 3.0Gb/sec RAID supported

2x Liteon LH-20A1S 9L08

1x Pioneer DVR-112D 1.21

The system was built by me.

@Bob

I really think the major issue, in my case, is a software limitation. Being a low level programmer, I don’t see a problem with a HDD keeping up with the data rate required. A HDD is much faster and responsive than a DVD drive and the bus is capable of transporting the required amount of data. But I will post back results from 3 burns at the same time. I would probably get better results if I used a single image file for each since it would mean less HDD access. I will take some screen shots and post it here of what happens.