Guru4u Forums

Posted: **Wed Nov 02, 2005 11:07 pm**

Both the DV drives on my new machine are reading at 3-4x when copying discs, however the writer writes at 9-10x! I'm sure there must be some setting i've got wrong but I can't bloody locate it, any ideas?

Posted: **Thu Nov 03, 2005 8:29 am**

maybe, but probably not as this should be enabled by default, you don't have you're IDE channels set to ultra dma?

A note to everyone. These settings will Improve your PC's performance. So make sure that DMA is enabled.. Here are the instructions on how to set it up...

right click on My Computer icon and then from the drop-down menu, click on the properties option. This will open system properties dialogue box on your computer screen. Now select the hardware tab and then click on the Device Manager button. In the Device Manager window, click on the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers branch to open it. From corresponding window, double click on the primary IDE channel. This will open the primary IDE channel property box on your computer screen.

In this box, click on the Advanced Settings tab. Here you'll find the details regarding the DMA or Ultra DMA settings mode. If the mode is not set to the DMA or Ultra DMA, then you should select Auto Detection from the Device Type drop-down list and then click OK. Then, close open window and restart PC.

On restarting, return to Device Manager and check again. Here if the current transfer mode setting is still not set to the DMA or Ultra DMA mode, select DMA if available from the Transfer Mode drop down list and click OK. Now once again, close all Windows and restart PC. Repeat the process mentioned above again to check the DMA or Ultra DMA setting installed on your system. This will set your hard disk to the DMA/Ultra DMA mode.

However, if you still find your system not set to be DMA or Ultra DMA, then you should first enable the DMA setting in the BIOS. For enabling the DMA setting in the BIOS, simply hit Del, when your system boots up and energy logo is being displayed. Once you are in the CMOS setup utility, open the BIOS feature set to enable the Ultra DMA setting. The above-mentioned process will set the primary channel of the PC to Ultra DMA. However, the other important channel i.e. the secondary channel, on which the CD-ROM is normally installed, remains to be configured for Ultra DMA an setting that is set to the PIO mode as the default setting.

Follow the above-mentioned procedure again and select the secondary channel in the device Manager and change the mode to DMA. This is an important setting and will significantly boost the PCs performance. By enabling DMA setting on the secondary channel the speed of the CD-ROM though will not increase but by bypassing the load on CPU, the overall performance of the PC will get a significant boost. After enabling this setting on the secondary channel, you'll notice that you won't have to stop working when your CD-ROM is accessing data, which is normally a case in most of the PCs.

source

this is all i can think off, if yoo are copying disc to disc then it sounds like something to do with the IDE channel even if it's not the above

Posted: **Thu Nov 03, 2005 8:33 am**

checked that last night, device manager wsa setting it to be controlled by the BIOS, but like an idiot i forgot to actually check BIOS, i'll do that now

Posted: **Thu Nov 03, 2005 10:35 am**

could you have put both drives on the same IDE cable? This usually reduces their performance...

Posted: **Thu Nov 03, 2005 6:21 pm**

BIOS is set to UltraDMA2 for both drives so no problems there

yeah Eamonn they're both on the same cable, with the DVD-ROM as master and DVD-RW as slave, but surely that would affect both reading and writing speed and not just reading?

Posted: **Thu Nov 03, 2005 7:07 pm**

you should put them on the same cable, its cd drivers and hard drives that you shouldnt mix

Posted: **Thu Nov 03, 2005 8:01 pm**

well it's not advisable to put 2 optical drives on the same cable for copying discs as it doesn't go down well with on the fly copying. For example:
http://www.duxcw.com/dcforum/DCForumID6/394.html

Posted: **Thu Nov 03, 2005 8:06 pm**

yeah true there is that but most people have only two ide ports and therefore would put cdroms on one and hard drivers on the other.

ive always copied on the fly and must say its never been an issue.

Posted: **Thu Nov 03, 2005 8:47 pm**

I have both the reader and writer on one IDE drive and it doesn't seem to affect the speed of either too much?

Posted: **Thu Nov 03, 2005 8:58 pm**

i'm not trying to copy on the fly! i'm trying to rip .iso to hdd, then burn that .iso to a disc after, but it's taking twice as long to rip as it is to burn!

Posted: **Thu Nov 03, 2005 9:00 pm**

could be a problem with your mdia, i have some dvd r's that burn hella slow for some odd reason

Posted: **Thu Nov 03, 2005 9:31 pm**

mdia?

Posted: **Thu Nov 03, 2005 9:44 pm**

sorry meant media

Posted: **Fri Nov 04, 2005 12:13 am**

yeah but these are the same dvds that ive been using for ages, and indeed it does the same on the old drive that ive transferred to new poota (but didnt on old poota)

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DVD drives reading slower than they write

DVD drives reading slower than they write