Why won't my burner burn at 2,4x anymore?

CD, DVD and (Ultra HD) Blu-ray Writers BenQ / Philips Writer
#21

Well, if you move the burner to the secondary channel, you can do on-the-fly recording from your DVD-ROM faster and more reliably. But that would mean investing in a second IDE cable. Right now, your system will have just one cable with both optical drives plugged into it. And any IDE cable will have only 40 “pins” but the better ones will have 80 conductors or wires. The extra ones are for grounding purposes and to reduce the risk of crossover while transmitting data at high speed. Open up your cabinet and check to see which cable you have currently. If it has only black connectors and thickish conductors, then it’s a 40 wire one. If it has blue and grey connectors and a thin conductors, then it’s an 80 conductor one.

By the way, we seem to have lost track of your problem here! Are your burns failing at 4x? What errors are you getting with the current setup? Please enlighten.

#22

That sounds like a good idea. Did the drive come bundled with an IDE cable?

Try experimenting with a different combination. Like moving your 1620 as master on the primary channel and the DVD-ROM as the slave. Install your 1650 as master on the secondary. Always hard-code the drives as master/slave using the jumper settings. I have not had very good results using cable select (purely from my perspective, others may disagree). Let us know how it goes!

#23

my burns aren’t failing at4x,it’s just that since i updated fw my sony dvd-r’s won’t write at 2,4x anymore,the speed i had most luck with.

I just bought a new benq dw1650
so now my question is, if i buy a new 80 pin ide cable,can i set it alone as master in my secondary channel and just leave the benq 1620 as slave in my primary channel?
check the screenshot and just imagine a new 1650 as master in the primary channel…

#24

you just answered,thank you,i will post back as soon as everything is up and running,you were really helpful.

#25

By the way, the blue connector of the IDE cable plugs into your motherboard. The one at the other end is for the master and the middle one for the slave drive.

#26

The 2.4x speed support for that particular media must have been removed from the firmware by BenQ (and they would have had a very good reason for doing so). Don’t worry about it. Most (good quality) media will burn very well at their rated speeds. Are your burns not coming out good at 4x and 8x with the new firmware? You can always flash back to an earlier firmware if you want :slight_smile:

#27

DVD-R do not have a 2.4x speed specified in the standards.

DVD-R supports 2, 4,6,8,10,12,16x speeds.
DVD+R supports 2.4, 4,6,8,10,12,16x speeds.
As posted above, the 2.4x speed was a bug in the burners firmware & it likely burnt at 4x anyway.

To the second question.
Yes, but if your HD (UDMA5/6 aka 100/133MB/s) is on the same channel, it will be slowed down alot by the Benq1620 (UDMA 2 aka 33MB/s).

It would be better as the slave on the second channel.

#28

ok,just installed the benq 1650 as master on the secondary channel,with 80 pin ide cable,i checked,
alone,since my hd is SATA.
and this is my first burn with mediocre media,right?
i know it’s not a whole disc,but anyways,
this was burnt with default settings,wopc on,sb and overspeed off.

Now,i guess this is a nice scan,right?
I burnt it at 4x

Now,is it normal that,when i use imgburn,the buffer stays at 100% the whole time,but the device buffer stays around 85-90% and sometimes drops back to 20% for a split second?

the drive is running in udma mode 2

BENQ____DVD_DD_DW1650_BCDC_08-April-2006_16_27.png641×532 38.2 KB

naamloos.PNG499×597 23.8 KB

#29

That’s a pretty decent burn. Try playing with the SB settings to see if you can get better results. Remember that SB takes a few burns to really start delivering good results, but I’ve tried and it works great for me. Also, with the 1650, try scanning at 8x speed. Try different burn speeds as well till you hit the “sweet spot”. Can’t really comment on the buffer behaviour you observed with ImgBurn, probably one of the gurus here can help you with that.

#30

thx,anyone can help me with the buffer issue,or is that normal?

#31

That is normal, no need to worry.

#32

If the buffer is being used too much, it can indicate a bottleneck in the IO. Your hard disk is pretty fast (7.2K, 1.5 Gbps SATA) so check if something else is slowing down the IO performance in your machine. Make sure you are running the latest VIA Hyperion drivers. Turn off all unneeded services, system restore and other crap. Don’t run other IO hungry apps (like P2P apps, BitTorrent etc) while burning DVDs. Some versions of Antivirus programs can also hit system performance.

#33

AFAIK, the device buffer fluctuation is caused by WOPC. Once WOPC reduces the speed during burn for a split of a second, the buffer drops to lower levels also. There is nothing you can do to ‘improve’ that, it’s normal.

#34

thanks a lot!!

#35

yup, buffer flux is most definitely caused by WOPC. dont listen to the other guy who said to check drive IO/antivirus/etc… :stuck_out_tongue: