i've thrown everything i got at this problem and i'm close to giving up...

1st: when burning my hdd red light stays constantly on and i notice the buffer level going up and down in nero. also i don't understand why is there so much paging. same problem for cds and dvds. the benq is master on one end of an 80way ide ribbon cable and my ricoh cdrw is a slave on the same channel. my really old cdrw makes better cd burns than the benq.



2nd: disc quality scans are really slow. also i don't like the results.



3rd: the benq drive isn't recognised as benq in nero (or windows) but the ricoh drive is. the third drive is a virtual drive (i had daemon tools)



4th: uninstalled the secondary, primary channels and the controller (several times) to make sure dma is enabled. defragged my hdd and flashed the 1620 in windows safe mode and still the same results.

5th: dvd media are infiniti 16x rated dvd-r mcc 03rg20 burned @ 4x. firmware is g7v9.

i think it might be a defective unit

Have you tried using different firmware?

Post the result of the Nero CD-DVD Speed burst transfer test, you need a disk with some data in the drive to run the test. It should display about 23 MB/sec.
Check the DMA settings of your source and target drive.
This is probably a result of the slow burning you see.

You bought a bulk drive, at least you use a bulk firmware. The drive id name is as usual for bulk firmwares.
Defragging is a good idea. In case your burst rate is ok, check if you have a online virus scanner running on your source disk. NVidia IDE drivers are also known to cause problems. Disconnecting the other drive on the IDE bus might also help.
G7V9 is a bad firmware for scanning, it does not support PIF scanning and might also cause slow scanning (not shure about this). Go back to G7T9.

Edit: Before I forget it, do not burn fast media at such slow speeds. The Benq is best at 8x and above. Lower speeds will produce worse results.

in device manager "current transfer mode:" is ultra dma mode 2 for the dvdrw and cdrw and for the hdd it's ultra dma mode 5.
dvd speed reults:

btw, that same test is faster in my old ricoh cdrw

when i burned a dvd @ 8x i think i've got even more errors (can't really trust the ricoh drive and can't wait for the benq to finish the scan) and the buffer was jumping up and down even more:

my ps2 (v2) read the dvd fine though

when burning @ 4x the buffer level does not go under 90%.
the firmware is now g7t9 but the disc quality scanning is still slower than 1x

my pc has got 512mb ram, mobo is msi 6534 and proc is p4 1.8ghz willamette core

what else should i do?

I have never had any success at all with Infiniti dvdr's on the Benq. Suggest you buy decent media ie. Verbatim or TY.

i meant to do that but they were out of stock

just burned a tdk cd-r 52x rated @ 24x and i still get high paging (again no such thing with the ricoh cd-rw i have)



and the disc quality scan is running at 0.70x. i'll post the results of the scan if anyone needs them.

but yeah. next time i'm getting verbatim dvds

Try updating your Intel chipset drivers and de-fragging your hard drive, I use Raxco Perfectdisk you can get a demo version at this link.

did not try the link you supplied but went to the intel site. did not work. maybe i messed it up. the ide intel application accelerator is 2.3.0.2164 but when i download it and install it in the device manager it appears as 2.3.0.2160.

anyway, the last update for my chipset is a lot earlier than the arival of the benq 1620. speaking of which the label on the drive it says something like... manufactured in september 2004 (i might have to double check). i think that's close to the date the drive was released. and the first drives were dogs weren't they?

i defragged the partition from which i burn with diskeeper and i can see why fragmentation can be a proble for burning but what's with the slow scanning. i also returned my mobo's bios settings to default because i o'ced my proc. like i said, i think the drive is defective.

i'm polishing my hammer... just give me the signal

The way i see it, there is nothing wrong with your drive at all. The 'lemon' drives are the ones made in oct2004 or after, depending on which thread you read.

You got slow quality scans minus the pif scans because you are using the G series firmware. Crossflash to retail B series and it WILL be fixed. I had the same problem and had to figure that out weeks ago. Scanning speeds will improve by a factor of 6x at least. http://dvdpro.club.st/firmware/BENQ_FW.htm

Your hd light is supposed to be constantly on if it's burning a dvd. You;re talking 5-8 megs per sec right? Ya it's normal.

Nero has recognized your benq drive. Because you're using an oem firmware, it wont be id'd as a benq. Crossflash and all will be well.

Try not to overreact - it's just a 50 dollar drive, if everything benq made was so crap they would have left the market long ago.

didn't say benq were bad (that's why i bought a drive "made" by them). i'm not sure how to cross flash (i'll try to figure it out later today and let you know).

my hd light being on when i'm burning a dvd -- ok.
my hd light being on when i'm burning a cd -- huh?!

when burning a cd with my ricoh cdrw there is almost no hd usage

WinDWFlash is the one you need to crossflash under windows. Of course if you fry your burner dont come back to this forum to bitch me out It worked for everyone else, myself included. You can crossflash back to OEM as needed - but i suspect you wont ever need/want to do that.

How fast are you burning your cds? 40x? That's several megs per second. I dont know how fast your regular burner is either. Keep in mind your LG has a 2 meg buffer compared to whatever your other burner uses, and that buffer needs to be filled.

While you're doing this, may i suggest the speed patch to allow reading of dvds at 16x? MediaCodeSpeedEdit also on this forum 'sticky' thread allows you to quickly edit the bios file prior to editing to allow you to read discs faster, instead of the default 8x limit. Yes, it is quite safe on any of the retail bios including version V

You should not install the Intel IAA [Intel application accelerator] it interferes with optical drives and can cause erratic behaviour.

The first link in my post are the correct drivers & the most up to date for your motherboard they are not the same thing as the IAA which you should remove.