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

I had a lite on 811 in usb2, and a WD 80gig 7200 2MB hard drive in usb2 on the same NEC pcmcia usb2 card on my laptop. At no point in time could I ever burn at 4x from the external hard drive, or at anything above 24x on cd without getting loads of burnproof coming in. Could burn fine from my internal hard drive at full speed. My usb2 case used to corrupt my data when it felt like on my hard drive, so I got a firwire usb combo case and only use the firewire. I can burn at 4x from external hard drive to external burner now. I can't hit 8x, but I believe if I change my burner case to firewire I'll be fine.
o yeah, since riteks work better at 4x than 2x, I used to make isos of what I want to burn off the ext hd onto the internal so I could go at 4x.
so ur prob is just a usb limitation (especially since it has a higher data overhead, and hogs cpu power). ur normal

Thanks for the reply, booma. I did tried connecting the HD to the firewire port of my laptop's card and it improved transfer rate considerably (7.5 to about 20 KBps), so I was able to burn at 4x, without problems. I hadn't realized that USB 2.0 was such a CPU hogger before...

I'm still facing a problem with the HD when using the firewire port, though. When I leave the HD idle for a while (say, 15min or so) the the laptop looks like it stops seeing it correctly. When I tried to access the drive again, it sometimes leaves the computer in unstable state and it invariably end in I/O errors. In one of the ocasions, it even got corrupted the file system structure. I fiigure it may be a problem with drivers but, since you have some experience with using a Firewire enclosure I thought of asking, in case you have seen something like this before.

cheers,
/jcs

Hi jcs

I have a combo USB firewire case for a DVD burner and I use an internal fireware port in my laptop and a PCMCIA card for the USB 2.0. I found out that the main problem when connecting to the USB 2.0 was due to the PCMCIA card. I tried to connect to another computer with an internal USB port and I didnt have any problems. Nevertheless I connect a external hard drive to the PCMCIA card USB port and seems to work fine.

About the firewire, I can burn at 4x without problem and the only porblem is that sometimes the system doesnt recongize the drive when I connect it so I have to re-start the computer.

Thanks, fuagda. The PCMCIA card that I have in my laptop has both firewire and usb 2.0 ports but I only see disconnection problems with the HD when I connect the enclosure through the firewire port. If I leave it connected to the usb 2.0 port it will never disconnect, no matter how long the idle time is. Because you also mention that you are having problems with the PCMCIA card port adapters, I am more inclined to think that mine can be an issue with the firewire ports too.

I have opted for leaving the HD connected to the firewire port during burns, ripping, etc, since the data transfer gain is considerable. I just have to make sure that I don't leave the computer unattended for a long time after it has finished the work, until I figure out what the other problem is

Thank you and booma again for the feedback. It has been very helpfull. :-)

I just got a PCMCIA USB2.0 card today and was testing it using an enclosed external harddrive, by transfering data. It took 5 minutes to transfer 700MB, so it's only about 2MBps? I was hoping to have this PCMCIA card, as well as buying an internal DVD burner using the same enclosing. When i was reading other sites (overclock extreme), when they test external enclosed HD read/write speed through pci_usb2 cards, they get about 17~23MBps, by transfering data and also use Sisoft's Sandra.

So my question is, what's the transfer rate that you guys get with PCMCIA_USB2.0? I'm kinda worried that the 2MBps that I'm getting is actually due to a low quality PCMCIA card?