Is USB2 HD Good to Burn From?

[theskeezix]

Time to increase disk capacity. Can buy 500GB Seagate internal drive for about same price as Seagate 500GB external USB2.0 drive.

All other things equal, any problems burning mp3 files from USB2.0 drive?

Moving 120GB of files off my my 2nd internal EIDE drive and then restoring them to new 500GB internal EIDE drive will be difficult. Plus, replacing that drive means I now have 120GB disk storage that I cannot use.

I will be burning at about a 24X rate on a Dell 2.0GHZ WinXP system.

Or is there another solution I haven't thought about???

[theskeezix]

One more thing - The WD5000 EIDE version claims a max xfer rate of 100 Mbits/sec while its USB2.0 counterpart claims "up to 480 Mbits/sec. I was not aware that USB2 drives were faster than EIDE drives, or am I missing something here?

[IdontexistM8]

Shouldn’t be a problem, I presume you mean 24x CD.

[DrageMester]

Burning CDs from files on an external harddrive connected through USB shouldn’t be a problem regardless of burning speed.

Burning DVDs from such a harddrive may be limited in how fast you can burn without getting buffer under-runs. This depends on the harddrive as well as the system.

[Arachne]

We’ve done it, it’s fine (from a USB2 Maxtor HDD to an internal burner).

Having said that, the burns are usually audio done at 16x.

[chef]

No problems here either, even I prefer FireWire (IEEE1394) over usb.
Tested with 400 and 500 gb usb2 externals.

[Two_Degrees]

[QUOTE=theskeezix;1997582]One more thing - The WD5000 EIDE version claims a max xfer rate of 100 Mbits/sec while its USB2.0 counterpart claims "up to 480 Mbits/sec. I was not aware that USB2 drives were faster than EIDE drives, or am I missing something here?[/QUOTE]

The ATA100 max transfer rate is 100 megaBYTES/sec. USB2.0 is 480 megaBITS/sec which translates into 60 megaBYTES/sec, but you’ll never see that. If you get 30MB/sec out of USB 2.0 you are doing good.

[theskeezix]

The ATA100 max transfer rate is 100 megaBYTES/sec. USB2.0 is 480 megaBITS/sec which translates into 60 megaBYTES/sec, but you’ll never see that. If you get 30MB/sec out of USB 2.0 you are doing good.

Well, I thought there was something funny there - thanks for the clarification.

[theskeezix]

Burning CDs from files on an external harddrive connected through USB shouldn’t be a problem regardless of burning speed.

Unfortunately, speed IS (was) a problem. I got sucked into the 52X claims and burned a buttload of audio CDs using a Liteon 52X CD burner at 52X. Had defragged all drives, turned modem off, etc. etc. but most all the CDs began “ticking” at about 3 Hz at about halfway out to the edge of the disk. Was burning from MusicMatchJB, now since uninstalled. Reburning them on the same drive but at 24X resolved the problem. That was burning from MP3 off an internal drive.

From now on I’ll just burn MP3s at 24X to about 66% of CD capacity. Given that, it looks like a USB2 drive will work fine.

Thanks for all the responses, guys!

[Arachne]

Ahhhh…this is why I metioned burning my audio (from mp3) at 16x.

Glad you found a problem-free burning speed for your audio.

[DrageMester]

[quote=theskeezix;2002441]Unfortunately, speed IS (was) a problem. I got sucked into the 52X claims and burned a buttload of audio CDs using a Liteon 52X CD burner at 52X. Had defragged all drives, turned modem off, etc. etc. but most all the CDs began “ticking” at about 3 Hz at about halfway out to the edge of the disk. Was burning from MusicMatchJB, now since uninstalled. Reburning them on the same drive but at 24X resolved the problem. That was burning from MP3 off an internal drive.[/QUOTE]This problem was NOT caused by burning from an external harddisk, but rather caused by burning a CD-R too fast. I find 52x burning to be hit-and-miss even with data CDs, and 48x can also give quite bad results with lots of media. 40x will usually produce readable results, but based on my experience I burn data at 24x or 32x depending on drive and media. For audio I burn at 16x or 24x depending on drive in order to minimize jitter, which is more important fo audio than for data CDs.

From now on I’ll just burn MP3s at 24X to about 66% of CD capacity. Given that, it looks like a USB2 drive will work fine.
You should be able to burn any quality CD-R media to 100% of capacity without problems, if you use a reasonable burning speed like e.g. 24x. With mediocre to bad quality CD-R media all bets are off.

[theskeezix]

Well, I have only to thank the folks on THIS forum for helping my find my problem. It was here that I found out about KProbe2, the program that showed just what was happening on my CDs. Forums like this one and the people that take the time to answer questions like you and the rest are worth their weight in gold.

[MrScary]

Have Never had a problem at 48x…Never gone slower either, unless my Burner or Nero has set the Burn to start lower then gos upto 48 to finish…Same with DVDs, i chose 8x if dvd is that or 16x if its that.
Have you got the ASPI drivers installed. ? If Not, Why Not.!!

[mciahel]

[quote=MrScary;2082959]Have you got the ASPI drivers installed. ? If Not, Why Not.!![/quote]Aspi is for Win9x and crappy software designed for Win9x. On Winnt 5.x and newer, Aspi is more a problem than a solution.