My name's Joe and I'm searching for a way to burn multiple DVDs at the same time. I've found myself doing several DVD projects in the last 7 months for my family and church. For a 100 year anniversary church concert, I ended up shooting and editing a multi-camera video, then doing 300 DVD's and 600 CD's. I stumbled through with Nero 8, using the "Use Multiple Recorders" option and external USB DVD drives (with 2 different computer systems). I was able to get through that, but I'd like a better solution.

Through research, I've discovered that my best bet might have been a standalone duplicator, which are fairly inexpensive. I found this duplicator at a place called Supermediastore.com.

I also ran across references to DVD controller cards, but I'm unsure if those work with SATA DVD burners.

Here's what I have now:

1. An older PC (Asus A8N-SLI motherboard with 8 SATA I ports on the board), Athlon 64 x2 4800+, 2GB RAM, 1 system and 1 storage hard drive.
2. 6 Samsung (TSSTcorp CDDVDW SH-S203) DVD burners.
3. Windows XP Pro.

Trying to use Nero 8 and multiple drives (all 6 connected to the mobo SATA ports), I get "DMA Driver Error, CRC Error." Usually, 1 or 2 of the DVD's fails during the burn and it takes forever, even though Nero reports that it will burn at 18x. Changing to lower speeds for the burn doesn't seem to make any difference - takes forever and one or more disc burns fail. I was able to put 4 DVD recorders into external enclosures, attach them via USB and burn 4 discs at once at 4x. I added 2 more external drives to a second system (also via USB) and burned 2 additional copies at 8x.

So, here are my questions:

1. Is there reliable software and hardware I can add to my existing system (such as a SATA DVD controller card) that will let me burn at fast speeds (at least 8x, preferrably 16x)?
2. Am I better off just selling the older system and applying the money to a DVD duplicator?

I don't expect (or want) a huge number of jobs, but based on the responses I've gotten so far to my work, I may get enough jobs to pay for a duplicator in the next few months.

Ideally, what I'd like to do is make this computer into a DVD burning station with what I already have. Since I can buy a 9 disc DVD tower for $559, though, I don't want to waste too much time or money trying to get it working.

I've scanned through the topics, but I'm not sure where to concentrate my search - software, hardware, specific burners, etc.

Hi Joseph, and welcome to CD Freaks

I've transferred your enquiry to the General Hardware section, since you will probably get better help than in the Newbie forum.

I own a duplicator and yes computers just aren't made to be duplicators you should get one

I've seen these controllers a lot while Googling this issue. I already have a tower and power supply I can use, along with the Samsung burners I listed above. I like the Samsung burners a lot. If I add two more of those, I could have a 1 to 7 tower for about $160 more. Does anyone see a problem with that approach - such as, the Acard controller doesn't work well with the Samsung drive?

Thanks. This forum is a great source of info.

Yup that duplicator seems like a good one. Make sure you have a decent PSU, since running 7 burners at high speed does use a good amount of power. Reducing the burn speed will also reduce the power consumption. If there are no problems with your current PSU, I wouldn't worry to much about it.

Thanks. I have an Antec 500 watt power supply that may work. They suggest a 350 watt supply for 8 devices. One thing occurred to me, though - is a regular power supply what is used in a duplication tower? Seems like the only things that are going to be used are the drive connectors, fans and the card connector. Will a regular power supply and a regular tower work, or are the internal connectors different?

check how many SATA connectors your PSU has, you probably don't have enough. Some MB's come with molex-to-sata power adapters, otherwise you can buy some. I don't know what connector is on the controller, hopefully its molex.

Molex to SATA connectors are not a problem. I have plenty of adapters. I'm more worried about how to power on the whole duplication system. I've shorted the pins on a power supply in the past to power it on (as an auxiliary supply), but it's not exactly the most elegant solution. (You just jumper 2 pins on the power supply's 20/24 pin connector.) I suppose the thing to do is order the Acard controller and go from there. Hopefully, I'll have everything I need already. If not, there are duplication cases available with their own power supply and power switch.

I'm back. I had a long delay because of a project I had to finish. Soon, I'll need to do DVD copies for that project.

Here's my current situation. I just got a 1-7 Acard SATA CD/DVD duplication controller card today from Copystars. I've loaded up my tower with 8 Samsung DVD burners - 1 for playback and 7 for copying. As I suspected, the Acard controller card has a slot for a 20-pin connector from a power supply, in addition to a 2-pin connector for a power switch.

Here are the problems:

1. The manual is fairly useless. It's broken English and the descriptions of various functions offer little useful information.
2. There are no instructions on basic setup. The Acard controller has 10 SATA connectors - 8 grouped together on the back and 2 on the interior. I assume the backplane SATA connectors are probably for the DVD burners and the two on the top of the board may be for hard drives, but I can't find any information on what should go where.
3. The power switch for my tower has to be held in for the power to stay on for the controller card and the drives. As soon as I release the power button, power goes away for the system. I'm assuming the tower power switch is momentary, and the Acard needs a true toggle on/off switch.

I've connected power to all the drives. They power up. The Acard controller also boots up and I can cycle through all the menu options. Everything appears to be working normally (except, of course, for the power switch problem). I've yet to attach SATA data connectors to the Acard.

Can anyone point me to some useful instructions on connecting the DVD drives and hard drive? Also, I need to know how to address the problem of the momentary power switch on the tower.

This looks to be a pretty simple procedure, once I get past these issues, but I don't want to screw anything up out of ignorance. I hope someone here has gone through this and can help out.

Just as you suspected the power switch on a PC is momentary. You can get any kind of toggle or push on/off switch to turn the system on and off. It may be hard to find a direct replacement, I would sugest going to a local electronics part store and select one from there. It might be good to get one with a round base with a nut/washer becuase you can just drill the right size hole in the case to add the switch. Since it is a very low power switch it won't matter the voltage/current specs on the switch, get whatever looks nice.

I can't help you with the HDD hookup or what files need to be on the drive or what format or folder setup it wants. Those two lone sata connectors are probably for the HDD and optical reader drives.

edit: it might be a good idea to hook up all the burner drives to a regular PC and flash the latest firmware and maybe enable automatic bitsetting with Ala's utility.

Thanks. Do you have a link to Ala's utility? (I'll google it.)

The reason the SATA connectors are puzzling is that there are 8 identical ports on the back of the unit, even though the card is supposed to be a 1-7 duplicator. That's why I suspected maybe the 2 on top were both for HDDs.

It's unfortunate that the Users Guide doesn't have even the most basic setup instructions. A picture would have been worth a thousand words.

Hi Joe - MediaCodeSpeedEdit can be found in this thread

Many thanks.

Does anyone know if the 20-pin connector on the Acard controller is there just to power the drives? If so, I can jumper the connector for the power supply and use the case's rear switch to turn the system off and on. I've done that to supply extra power to a 16-hard drive UnRaid system. But, I don't want to do that if the Acard controller is using the power supply's 20-pin connector for something else, too.

It's unfortunate that the Acard controller's Users Manual doesn't have even the most basic setup instructions. A picture would have been worth a thousand words.

The drives I have in my system are all Samsung SH-S203, but they have 3 different designations:

Samsung SH-203N/BEBN SB01
Samsung SH-203N/BSBN SB01
Samsung SH-203B/BEBN SB02

The drives that are listed as supported on the MCSE site are:

Samsung SH-S203B SB00, SB01
Samsung SH-S203N SB01

For the Samsung SH-S203N, MCSE makes no distinction between BSBN and BEBN. Does this indicate that both can use the utility to be flashed?

More importantly, does the fact that my 203 drives have different designations mean that they won't work with the Acard controller? Do all the drives have to be identical? Which also begs the question, if a drive in my duplicator goes bad a year from now, will I have to replace all the drives if that specific model isn't being produced anymore (a likely scenario, I would think)?

Here's what I think I'll do: I'll call tech support for Copystars and try to get info on which drives get hooked up to the SATA connectors on the Acard. (Maybe they can also link me to better instructions.) Then, I'll jumper the pins in the power supply unit, to feed power to the Acard controller and the drives. Next, I'll try to copy a disc to all seven drives.

I don't mind burning a few coasters in the experiment, but I don't want to fry the card, so if anyone thinks this is a really stupid idea, please let me know.

Don't know why I didn't try Acard's site first, but I just located a very clear pdf of what goes where on the Acard controller. The two SATA ports on the top are indeed for the HDD and the DVD-ROM. The first 7 ports on the backplane are for the DVD burners. My burners are on the compatibility list as being able to burn at 20x, and they make no distinction as to the various model numbers of the Samsung drives, just SH-S203. Hope the variations in model numbers doesn't create problems. I'm going to go ahead and jumper the power supply connector so I can use my case's back panel power switch to turn the machine off and on.

I'll report back and let you know how this works. Here's hoping there's no blue smoke.

Well, so far, so good, but the documentation on the Acard site is a mess, too. I found a second, completely different pdf for hooking up the DVD burners. It appears more up to date and so far seems to be working OK, but the SATA connectors for a 1-7 drive system are in different locations. (There are 10 connectors on the backplane, not 8 as I originally reported. Oops.) I'm doing a DL burn to just a couple of drives right now (both match). Later I'll try to do a copy to hard drives, then to all DVD burners at once.

The new documentation explains that the 20-pin connector or a separate molex connector must be chosen, but both should not be hooked up at the same time. I thought that might mean the case's power switch would work if I disconnected the molex, but it does need a dedicated on/off switch to function. So, I pulled out the 20-pin connector and jumpered the green and black wires together, then inserted a molex connector into the Acard controller. The computer case's rear power switch now activates system power. (The front power switch, of course, does nothing.)

The documentation also explains which inside SATA header is for the HDD and which is for the DVD-ROM drive. When I first booted the system with all SATA connectors engaged, it asked me if I wanted to format the hard drive. This could represent a problem, since I read in other documentation that I should have been given the option to format for DVD or DVD DL (and, I think, Blu-ray disc, since this controller supports Blu-ray). I wasn't given that option, so I'll just have to check whether I have the ability to copy DL discs to the hard drive. My first copy is an "On-the-fly" DVD source to dual DVD target copy.


OK, the DL disc copy finished successfully. I then did a full 1-7 disc copy On-the-fly. The system reported 7 successful disc burns. I did a cursory check and all seems well with each of the discs in my Playstation 3.

The slightly different version numbers of the drives seems to have made no difference. The single layer discs burned in a little over 7 minutes. The next test is to see how fast DL and SL discs burn from the hard drive. I should note that I'm not using a DVD-ROM drive for the player. I'm using the same Samsung burner throughout the system, which may be slowing the disc burns somewhat. The drives are supposed to be able to burn SL discs at 20x. One of the reasons I like the Samsung drives is that reviews seem to indicate fast and reliable burns. So far, this seems to be the case, both before using them in the dup tower and after. I used Sony 16x discs for the SL burn. That the Samsung drives are in the Acard site's compatiblity list is a good indicator that they should work well with this controller.

I may have lucked out with this little project. It's definitely a lot easier than trying to monkey with a PC to get the burning done.

no one is for a hard drive and the other one is for a reader the other 7 are for writers

I thought I'd report back on my duplication tower build. I ended up with an Acard controller, as I said before. One feature I discovered is that since I am using the same Samsung DVD burner as my player drive, I can burn 8 discs at the same time with this 1-to-7 tower. If I load a DVD disc image (or CD disc image) into the hard drive, designate the hard drive partition as the source and hit "Copy," the system treats the player as a burner, as well. It spits out its drawer and burns 8 discs at once. Also, the system has no problem with single or double layer disc (and presumably Blu-ray) images on the hard drive.

All in all, the build was one of the simplist I've ever attempted and so far, after a few projects, it's worked extremely well. If I had it to do over again (before I had bought burners for duplicating with a computer) I probably would just buy a pre-configured system. The cost savings are not at all significant, and I'm my own tech support now. However, there isn't a lot to go wrong (I hope) so the experience of building one makes the prospect of fixing something that does go wrong a lot easier.

Thanks to everyone here who helped me with this project.