Slow Burns

[snapper]

hi all,

I'm currently experiencing slow burn speeds on my 106 pioneer DVD 4X burner.
I just did a DVD->DVD copy and it took around 13min to do a ~2.5GB disc. It used to take around 15min for a full ~4.3GB disc.

Yesterday it took around 12min to burn a CD-R at 16X.

In each of these attempts the read ahead buffer droped wy below 100%. When doing the CD it dropped to 0% every 10 sec, then the DVD-RW drives buffer dropped to 0% then the process was paused and the buffers were filled up then the process continued.

This behaviour only just starting happening a few days ago. It was all fine a few weeks ago.

I'm running Win XP Pro, SP1. I have 4 devices 2 X IBM 20GB HDD (both on Primary IDE), 1 X Pioneer DVD-ROM and the burner (Both on secondary IDE).

Both channels are set to DMA if available and both currentlly report DMA mode 4.

They are all connected via ATA-66 conntections.

Amount of space on HDD are:
4.28GB and 7GB.

The CPU was around 18% before the burning began, memory was around 35%.

PC specs. P3 550Mhz, 256MB PC 100 RAM.

Nothing much was running in the background, the HDD wasn't really in use during the process.

Any one know what could have caused this problem? And Or do you have a suggestion as to a fix?

thanks

[alex zorrilla]

It could be that the drive itself is dirty. You can buy a CD/DVD drive cleaning kit for pretty cheap.

--Alex

[snapper]

Alex,

I worked it out. I was running Visual Basic those days and I forgot to reboot the machine before I did the burn.

I have just rebooted my machine and ran some simulation burns and they all seem to be running at full speed now (CD-R and DVD-R).

thanks