5680 & The DVD/CD-RW Combo Drive speed issues

Hello everyone.

So far I have been very happy with my new 5680. However, today I burned a few CDs for a friend and have observed low write speeds. I cannot claim that the CDs are of quality (no cases, just a spindle of CDs), but here it is:

I burnt a 650MB CD and a 580MB CD, calculating a rate of about 1200KB/sec on average between the two. That sort of scared me because Nero was reporting that I could write at 24x (3600KB/sec) on that CD, even after a 'Speed Test'. I decided to investigate... Looked into my Device Manager and Nero and both marked my drive as a Toshiba DVD-ROM SD-R2512. For those of you who don't know, PCTorque's Customize & Buy script claims that the drive is a Toshiba SD-R9012 running at 8xDVD and 24x10x24CDRW. I quickly looked up the R2512 on the Net and found that it is 24x24x24! Either way, the burn speeds didn't seem right. WTF?!

To make sure I wasn't making a mistake, I went to further test the drive with some other CDs. I burnt a CDRW at 4x, but it was old and I assumed it could only handle 4x. My assumption appeared to be correct because when I grabbed a 'High-Speed Only' CDRW it burnt at 10 (however, probably to the crappiness and age of the latter CDRW, midway through the burning process the sound coming from the drive started to change, until I heard loud rattling, which was promptly followed with a stop of the drive, ejection of the disc, and Nero yelling at me with errors; fortunately, my drive is still alive and well).

So, could this all be due to poor media? Why is my drive being identified incorrectly (or is it actually being id-ed correctly?; if it is, I'll shut up )?

Thanks.

Mikhail

Bad news:

1) The guy who gave me the CDs was successful at burning them at 40x. Since he has a 52x burner, I assume that the CDs are actually 40x-marked.

2) After a reboot, I burned a third CD using the same blank as the original two and got the same average speed of 1200~1300KB/sec (I take the size of the data being written in MB as reported by Nero, multiply by 1024 and divide by the number of seconds it takes to burn the data). I am oh-so-sad...

This might help: http://www.mikhailmarkin.com/fun/testresults.htm

Heh, thanks for that, but that isnt the issue. Nero seems to be detecting the speeds of different CDs automatically, only giving me appropriate speed settings in the Burn dialog.

If you are talking about Nero DriveSpeed, that is only for reading (btw, can anyone tell me what the Speed Down time is? DriveSpeed tells me it is currently at 32sec).

Anyone else?

P.S. Just 5 minutes ago I realized why I was getting so little feedback: I screwed up the subject line, LMAO.

Update/Pondering: I have DAEMON tools and its virtual drives show up in Nero. They show up as 3 distinct ones (as they should) in DiskInfo (in Nero Burning ROM) and as an 'Image Reader' in 'Chose Recorder..'. Could DAEMON be conflicting with Nero?!

Yeah, it has both set at 24x.


UPDATE: I just paused the POST process to take a look at the device listing and it IS the faster Toshiba SD-R2512. I am so bloody confused... Why, oh, why am I being taunted by the slow CD-R speeds?!

Myrkat, you brought up a point. I do have Underrun protection enabled. I will disable it and try again (I'm gonna simulate the burn this time, though; can't waste CDs right now).

As I mentioned above, I have tried using CloneCD to burn a CDRW and it worked, at 4x which would be the maximum of the media itself.

I'll keep you guys posted.

P.S. Mods: Can you correct the title of this thread? I think thats throwing people off. Thanks.

Device Manager states that Ultra DMA is enabled on both primary and secondary masters (which I assume are the HD and the DVD/CD-RW).

I was afraid of this, but it all comes to the same simptoms as in this thread: http://sagerforums.com/showthread.php3?threadid=2304 . The speeds I'm seeing are similar to what people have reported. Also, when I did the read test, it did the start-slow-and-eventually-make-it-to-24x thing. And, to no surprise, my model of the burner is simply a consequent model of the one mentioned in the thread.

However, it doesnt seem to be a problem with Nero because I'm simulating a burn in CloneCD right now and it has been 8x all the way. That makes me think that the drive is actually sensitive like some guys have proposed because the speed never went above 8x which is pretty much what happens when a media is rated for low speeds. I'll see if I could get my hands on other brands of media (instead of no brand, marked 40x or not)... Thank God to burn simulation!

Thank you, Myrkat. Now, I just need people to reply .

I am happy to report that I am getting closer to the truth: I just tried FujiFilm CD-R media and it burnt (simulated) at an average of 2400KB/sec (380MB file in 3min)! Thats 16x! Plus, since I couldnt find any rating on the CD-R or its package (its not new), I figured it might actually have been marked at 16x. Yuppey! I think I will actually go buy some media today.

The Quest for the Holy Media continues...

THE QUEST IS OVER!

I went out and bought a spindle of 24x FujiFilm CD-R's and they work! Looking at the burn process in CloneCD, it starts at 8x, then goes to 16x, then 20x, and finally 24x at the very end (this is actually why I was getting an average of 2400KB/sec in my second last post). 'Made in Japan' Rules!!!

Now, I am COMPLETELY satisfied with my 5680 .

Are you testing it for a full cd burn? Try burning an image of something (a full image, eg 700mb) with CloneCD. It shows you the write speed at any given instant. The reason I'm telling you this is because manufacturers are a-holes and rank drives by the burn speed on the OUTER rim, not the inner. So basically, as I've stated in some of my posts above, it starts at 8x, steps up to 12x, then 16x, then 20x and then barely has time to step up to 24x before the burn ends (dont ask me why, but it steps up in descrete intervals, not gradually).