I just burned a couple of CDs today and I noticed that my buffer underrun was at 0 the whole time I was burning my backup copy of BF1942. I notice that it also took a minute or two longer to do it too.
I looked in the settings and I didn't see anything that looked out of place but then again I must be missing something...

I know that I did this once before because I lost it the copy and when I did that one it burned in under 6 minutes and the buffers were full.

So what do I look for?

Thanks
"g"

version of clonecd?
OS?
burner brand & model?

CloneCD is the most recient version.
Using the standard game profile.

Burner is the Liteon 52x24x52 flased with the most recient firmware. I was using an older firmware and it burned as described above then I updated to the most recient and there was no change.

The reader is the Liteon LTD-166s also with the most recient firmware.

OS is XP Pro.

On a side note: I spoke to a friend that also uses CloneCD and suggested that my disk was scratched or a fingerprint might have caused the program to determine it to run at a lower burn setting to insure a good burn. I'm not exactly sure that I buy that but....

I just find it weird that after archiving several of my disks that I know the buffer was used and now when I have used it the last 2 or 3 times the buffer is either not used at all or it will fill up at the start of a burn then as it starts to write to the buffers go from 100% to 0 and just stay empty for the duration of the burn process. At the same time I have noticed that my burn times have increased by a few minutes or so.

Thanks,
"g"

this may be completely out of place, but I would run a system defrag and try to burn something after that to see if the same thing happens.

Below is an image of ClonCD when it was in the middle of burning...




What was weird was that intitally it filled the buffers up to 100%, the lines were blue, but then when the burn actually started, like at 5-10%, it just leaked down to what you see here...

This was a burn of a disc that was SafeDisc V2...

I was just inside the rig the other day I will go back in and make sure that I didn't jiggle something loose, I guess I could then try reinstalling CloneCD and see what happends...

I was looking for some confirmation that indeed the buffers should be mostly full, like I have seen them many times before, and that something has changed and it is not opperating correctly...

Thanks,
"g"

Thoughts?

Ok guys I made sure that everything was connected properly still and even reinstalled ClonCD.

I have noticed that some disks seem to use the buffers and some do not.

I tried an audio CD and it used the buffers for almost the whole copy time.

Then I tried my D2 LOD disk and it used the buffers up to about 65% of the total copy time then it went down to 0% again.

If I do BF1942 it dosen't use the buffers at all which is weird because I know that I did this once before and it did use the buffers but oh well.

At the very least could someone please help me to understand what is going on here?

Is this normal behaivor for this program?

What do the main and sub buffer functions do for CloneCD?

What controlls how and to what extent that they are used?

Thanks,
"g"

Well I wonder if it could have been a bad flash on my DVD drive?

I also increased the buffers to max 76.5megs...

I just re did my LOD and it completed in just over 3 minutes and it used the buffers the whole time.

The copy time differences was about half from the time before.
First time was 6:04 and the last was 3:22.

Oh BTW I also uninstalled ASPI 4.60 too.

"g"

Well I can't figure this damn thing out...
Just did BF1942 again and it did fill the buffers for a time, like to 45% of the burin time, but then it started draing and by 60-65% it was empty again but my burn time did go from 6:40 minutes to 5:28 minutes so something did speed things up but you got me on which one...

If someone could explain the buffer thing and help me to understand when I should see them in use vs not need them to be in use I would sure appreciate it.

Please put my mind at ease...

"g"

Have you tried an uninstall then reinstall?
Have you checked the BIOS? Anything running in PIO Mode?
Got an 80 conductor IDE cable on your disk(s)?

Yes I did uninstall and reinstall,
Everything in the BIOS looks fine,
Yes 80 pin connectors are on the disks...

Can someone please just confirm if the behaivor I am experienceing using CloneCD is normal or not...

Thanks,
"g"

Here is the deal, reciently I have noticed that while backing up some of my disks that the main buffer and sub buffer bars are not always used.

In fact I've seen that the behaivor of the 2 bars in CLCD is different each time.

Now, I wouldn't have thought twice about the whole thing except that the other day I did a disk that took a few minutes longer than it had previously. In looking at the burn process I noticed that the buffers were not at 100% which I thought was odd....
However I can't say for sure that I remember it correctly thinking that the buffer bars were full during the reference burn some time ago...

So now I have done some trouble shooting and observing, most of which is out lined in my other thread, which leads me to ask the questions:

"What deterimes the behaivor of the Main and Sub buffer bar use?"

"Is the behaivor that I am seeing/describing in CLCD normal?"

"Is it normal to have certin disks that you are archiving using the various profiles in CLCD to not use the buffers at all or use them for a portion of the burning and then not use it if its not needed?"

Please, I just am looking for confirmation that everything is working as it should be... I don't know why but it just seems to me that up untill a week ago all of my archiving used the buffer and the bars reflected that, problem is that enough time has passed and I may not be remembering it correctly...

Thanks,
"g"

From my burning experience with CloneCD, the buffers range from 98-100% writing, reading they are around 0%.

Does your burner have 'BurnProof' or 'Justlink" or something like that? If so, when your burn is the light indicating that burnproof is being used come on? My Lite-On 24102B has a 3 way LED (green=read, red=write, orange=waiting for data), if your drive is using burnproof, the burn will take longer.

I tried on-the-fly for the 1st and last time in my life with CloneCD, mainly due to the slow burn (It was the fault of my old PC, slow as all hell), so if your doing on the fly its quite possibly will be a little bit slower, especially if the drives are on the same channel.

If your not doing on-the-fly but from HDD-to-Burner, then its possible that your HDD is fragmented, also the media may be dodgy as I have a dodgy Princo RW and no burning program will write to it above 4X, even though its rated up to 10X. (Came with burner, what did I expect? A good CD-RW?? pfft!)

Also, if you have a drive which has something like Smart-X which lowers the burning speed depending on the conditions of its environment (ie - Media, fragmentation and the like), then it will set it lower so the burn is ok.

Are all your drives working in DMA mode? My Sony CDU4811 (48X Sony CD-ROM) was set to PIO mode and couldnt be changed for some reason, used upwards of 70% of my CPU (see below) to copy files from CD to HDD. I dont know why, but it was only fixed with a re-format of C: partition and a re-install of XP. Same OS, same settings, but DMA is enabled and working, so its fine now.

Last note, according to CloneCDs help file (you did glance though it didnt you?? ), CloneCD automatically sets the best buffer size.

Hope it helps.

Nope it aint normal. Buffers should stay almost full during the whole process (up to 97-97%).

Do you get buffer problems using other burning software?

To sum up most possible problems/solutions:

• Check your DMA settings in both Bios and OS. Are they both reporting UDMA2? If not, change the DMA setting manually, if that doesnt work uninstall and reinstall the drive or use IAA if you have an intel chipset.
• Are you writing on the fly? If yes it could be possible that changing your config will solve the problem.
• Wouldnt hurt to check your ASPI
• Use good quality - clean media
• Is your drive defragmented? If not for a while, defragmenting will help
• Are other programs that wanna access the drive running in the background? If yes disable them.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but according to your screen shot it looks as if your trying to do an on the fly copy. If this is the case you will end up with this situation every time you try to copy a safedisk protected CD. It takes too long to read the weak sectors and it empties out the read buffers. That would also explain why an audio CD worked just fine. No copy protection.

Create an image of the CD to your HD and then burn from the image. If you don't have a lot of disk space, you can delete the image when your done.

Well spotted; I have now cleaned my screen

Yep that is exactly the situation... I guess I just never noticed it before...
I don't mind the fact that it works that way, I would rather copy on the fly thus the reseaon that I got the LTD-166s for a reader, I just wanted to make sure that it's working properly is all.

I think that since most of my CDs are SafeDisk protected that if I am copying on the fly that this is normal behaivor, I am now releived...

Thanks guys,
"g"