I recently took advantage of Newegg's $29.99 price on a new LG 18X Dual Layer DVD burner drive. I needed one, since my current drive doesn't always eject properly, and I was getting annoyed at it. I read that this LG drive was very quiet, and did fast burns.

What I didn't take into account is the fact that I don't actually burn all that often. 90% of the use of my drive is actually archiving my DVD's on to my home network so that I can watch various things at my own pace, without having to worry about either of my two toddlers getting their teeth on yet another disk. (and without constantly having to eject the various disks)

Anyway, I had a 3 and a half year old BenQ 4X DVD burner in there. I did a little test using DVD Decrypter and RipItForMe, and was able to rip the entire 3 hours of TV in 17 minutes on the old drive. Then I shut down the PC, swapped in the new LG drive (manufactured December 2006, no less), and did the same thing again.

I was expecting it to finish in 10 to 13 minutes or so. I figured that over 3 and a half years, the drives must have had some improvement, or people would just be sticking with their old drives. Guess what? The new drive, though it may BURN a whole lot faster than my old 4X drive, took a whopping 19 minutes to rip the same DVD. Yes, it was over 2 minutes slower. The new drive is working in UDMA 2 mode, and burns fine. It is just the ripping that I'm unhappy with. It peaks out at 4.5X.

Not such a big deal, but definitely not the improvement I was looking for. I am thinking of sending it back for a refund.

However, without any idea on what a good time for a DVD rip is these days, I wouldn't be able to make an educated choice on selecting another model.

So, without further ado, I'd like to request that anyone out there with a recent DVD burner (say, made in the last couple of years) please do a little test and tell me what your total times to rip the DVD are. Also, please tell the length of the movie you are ripping, since it impacts the ripping time, too.

I'm thinking of writing up a review of the drive, and this would give me some good comparison numbers.

Thanks!

Well from my experiences, ripping my DVDs takes about 5-10 minutes.

I've got a Benq 1650 and I never get a rip speed slower than 6x. It always manages to find a way of maxing out at around 12-13x speed.

For rip times, on average I tend to get single layer DVD backups (4385 Mb) ripped to my hard drive in around 5-6 minutes. The slowest ripping time I've ever had for double/dual layer DVDs is around 10-12 minutes (but this was a 8 Gb DVD - some 5 and 6 Gb DVDs have ripped 2-3 minutes quicker).

Maybe you should put your drive in UDMA4 mode. I know that my Benq drive is definitely connected in UDMA4 mode. Connecting an optical drive in UDMA2 mode can cause significantly slower data transfer rates which can affect ripping and burning speeds.

It might also help if you post some of your PC's specs so that we can try to establish whether your PC will support UDMA4.

I've got a Sempron 3000 Compaq Presario SR1010Z system. When I go into the BIOS, both of my hard drives are showing as working at UDMA 4. However, the DVD burner is showing as UDMA 2.

Any ideas on why? Do the DVD burners usually default to UDMA 2? Maybe it has something to do with the cable. Hmm.

From my experience, hard drives should be running in UDMA mode 5 or 6.

Have you done a burst rate test in Nero cd/dvd speed? You could need a 80-wire 40-pin flat ribbon cable.
Also, you don't tell us what disc you are ripping. 3 hrs. of TV means nothing. What is the file size, 4480 MB or whatever, and the type of disc?
My LITE-ON LH-18A1P@20A1P can rip a single layer 4.38 GB disc in less than 5 mins.

I've had a look at the specs for your Compaq Presario SR1010Z PC and the specs are more than good enough for ripping and burning DVDs at high speeds. It sounds like it might be your IDE cables that are the problem. Follow steven2874's advice on IDE ribbon cables.

Yeah that sounds about right.