Hi,

I have a external hard drive (Maxtor 160Gb in a FireXpress 525 USB 2.0/firewire enclosure) and I recently got a Memorex DualX (i.e. Pioneer 106) DVD burner which I also put in a USB 2.0 enclosure (ADS). This is a solution which works well for me because my main working platform is a laptop and I only do the burning at home.

I have burned DVDs at 1x (DVD-R) and 2.4x (DVD+RW) from files stored in the external hard-drive without problems. I did a speed test of the source and a simulated burn with Nero 6 before trying 4x and it turned okay (the HD speed marked at 7.6x). However, when I tried the real burning I got read errors in the middle of the burning and I ended up with two coasters. The first time occurred 2 min. after starting, whereas the second (we always have to trip twice, don't we ) was aprox. a bit more than half-way through.

I was wondering if anybody out there has faced a similar situation and has any advice. Could it be having both external devices connected to the same USB 2.0 PCMCIA card in the laptop the main issue? When I copied the files to the internal HD of the laptop, I was able to burn at 4x fine.

thanks,
jcs