I am having very annoying problems with my Lite-ON SOHW 1673S (Firmware JS05) - it will not keep up to a disc at any speed when burning a DVD on the fly from my SAMSUNG D162C TS02 DVD-ROM - I am currently trying 8x and it takes over 30 minutes to complete.

The drive buffer is all over the shop on nero 6x and is constantly under-running. I know there are common fixes for this problem and believe me, I have spent hours searching forums for solutions but come up with nothing.

Here is a list of what I have tried:

DMA - DMA is enabled for both drives and windows XP is not reverting to PIO mode. I tied re-installing the IDE drivers but nothing (deleted and restarted windows). DMA still active. Tried PIO, and as expected, extremeley slow, even compared to what I am getting at the moment!

My DVD-ROM was playing up, originally had brand new LITE-ON ROM, so swapped it and now have above drive to read discs, this did not solve problem).

I have tried my friends DVD writer - Lite-ON (1653 I think), doing the same thing, even though that is a known working drive, so I guess it can't be the drives themselves.

I have tried different software - roxio easy media creator 7, just as bad. Tried a free DVD copying utility, exactly the same buffer behaviour.

I have tried an earlier version of NERO - just the same, I have also tried installing every update from the site, just as bad.

I have updated the firmware on the writer to the latest version, still the same.

I have 80 pin cables installed.

The writer burns perfectly at full speed when burning from an image off the hard drive.

My machine is well within spec - AMD Athlon 2500+, 768MB RAM. The windows XP task manager performance tab shows the CPU idle with 2% used at the most, so my system certainly is not straining for resouces.

I have updated the IDE SiS drivers, just as bad, however, this showed me something which may be of interest - the IDE utilites tool says that the current device use is UDMA 4 - I thought this particular drive only supports mode 2? Could this affect it? My DVD-ROM is running at UDMA mode 2.

If anybody can come up with an answer, I would be very grateful - I may even ask for a photo and stick it next to my writer for anyone who solves this as I am running out of patience!!!

Cheers, Paul.

When you reinstalled IDE drivers, what drivers put in your system?
If you install Sis drivers, try to uninstall then and to install microsoft standard IDE drivers. These are most efficient for dvd burning until now.

Very few, if any, ROM drives can keep up with 8x burning. To illustrate, run a transfer rate test in CDSpeed on the ROM drive using the disc you wish to copy. Save the results as an image file. Now run the same Transfer rate test using a blank DVD in your burner, and compare the 2 graphs. You might well see that for about the 1st 1/2 of the burn, the ROM drive is running slower than the burner. Even if the speed is equal, that's not fast enough in many systems.

Also, if the drives are on the same IDE channel, your controller may simply not be up to the task, and once an under-run occurs, you will see a "see-saw" pattern of buffer under-runs that continues for the whole burn.

Hi geno888,

I tried deleting the microsoft IDE drivers and then let windows reinstall them after reboot. This made no difference, I then installed the SIS drivers, just as bad, so I have removed them again.

I am now running the microsoft IDE drivers again, still the same!! HELP!

Maybe you missed the answer of rdgrimes, a veteran of CDFreaks

Thanks for your advice - is on the fly copying of DVD discs never an option then really? Or is there some hardware that is up to the job that I can burn - 30 mins in total to do one disc (creating the image then burning the disc) does seem an awfully long time.

Depends on what you're reading, we have several firmware mods that allow 16x ripping for most discs on a couple different drives. So ripping to HD and then burning can still be done in 20 min or less on a full disc.

As to on-the-fly copying, 4x seems to be the practical limit unless your reading drive is doing 7x-16x CAV speeds. Many drives won't even keep up with 4x in the 1st 30% of the disc due to rip speed locks on video content. The transfer rate test tells the story.

dvdrom and burner not on the same IDE cable ? a cdspeed transfer rate test from the dvdrom would be good.

I have run the speed tests, sorry about one being a screen shot - did not see the save icon until too late!

Here is the graph for the DVD writer:



Full speed for the media. What is the yellow line showing???

Here is the graph for the writer:



Sorry abut the small size - as you predicted, the ROM comes nowhere near the 8x required, doesn't even make it to 6 throughout the full transfer.

I feel slightly embarassed now for being so niave about the whole DVD burning process - guess ROMS don't do what they say on the tin. Mr Grimes, I think you should come out of retirement, your a genius

What firmware mods can you recommend for my drive then to make the HD image rip a bit quicker?

I currently have both drives on the same IDE channel by the way - writer as master. I tried all combinations and there was not very much difference at all.

Most ROM drives, and burners too, have speed locks for video discs. LiteOn drives mostly have firmware mods available to speed them up. Your burner should rip at 16x using the Omnipatcher tool at the top of this forum. Keep in mind that 16x ripping is pretty hard on a drive, heat and wear-wise. Fortunately they're cheap. 12x is often quicker, as it's less likely to slow down due to errors.
YMMV

As to the Samsung drive, I think you're out of luck.