Waiting for buffer to recover/hdd activity

[Genaugmen]

I've been using imgburn for a few months or more to burn multiple disk at once. I'm usually burning 3 at a time at 12x. I've had no problems with buffer or hard disk keeping. I just recently did a fresh install of win 7 64bit and now I have these buffer problems and messages about hard disk activity continually while burning anything more than 1 disc. I was burning three disc in 7 mins or so before, now, well a whole lot longer. The burning process is constantly stopping while buffers recover and then the messages about hard disk activity. All of my drives are sata (optical and hdd). My cpu usage is around 5%. 2 disc just finished burn and verify after 28mins, one just started verifying. Burning and verifying all three was only taking around 12mins before. What on earth could have caused such a drastic change on the same hardware? My system is less cluttered than before. Actually I've made 2 changes to the system but can't see how they would relate to the problem. I added a second video card and the hypersli patch, but can't see where that would come into play with this issue.

Edited February 2, 2012 by Genaugmen

[LIGHTNING UK!]

Run something like HD Tune on your hdd and post the benchmark graph please.

 

Before you start it though, go into the option and make sure it's set for a full test.

 

3 x 12x burns would be ~50mb/s at peak speeds... to me, that seems an awful lot for a normal mechanical hdd to handle when random accessing 3 image files (plus usual windows I/O going on in the background).

[Genaugmen]

I've never had a problem burning 3 at a time as long as I don't go higher than 12x. But now it seems to stop feeding the buffers all together until all three are completely empty. I've burned around 400 dvd's this way with no issues. Just recently updated all three burners and been all good. No problems until win7 reinstall. I did do all of the optional updates this time around (except language packs). Maybe something to do with that. But some of them I noticed help with compatibility with older software, noticed that when I was setting up my sons last system.

 

I've never even seen these buffer/hdd activity messages in all of my use until now.I guess I should add that almost all the files I burn are on a 1.5Tbyte drive. The 500gig drive is my system drive, I guess where things are buffered. I'm adding a screenshot of the other drive.

Edited February 2, 2012 by Genaugmen

[Genaugmen]

Here's the drive my files for burning are on. Couldn't add with an edit.

[LIGHTNING UK!]

The default 20 / 40 meg buffer will only be enough for about 2 or 3 seconds worth of hdd streaming interruption. If the buffer wasn't being filled at all, it would therefore empty out almost immediately.

 

What I expect you're seeing is the buffer level slowly dwindle off down to zero as the hdd just can't keep up. How long does it take to recover from an empty buffer?

 

The amount of free space on the disc (controlling where the file are located - notice the drive gets a lot slower as it fills up) and fragmentation are both important factors.

 

Stick DVD-R's in all 3 burners, go into discovery mode and enable 'Test Mode' (so as to not waste discs), then start burning.

 

In theory, you should be able to max out all 3 drives doing that because the program is making the image data up as it goes along - there's no reading from the hdd. That'll at least rule everything from ImgBurn -> Burner out of the equation.

[Genaugmen]

I'll try out test mode. It takes much longer for buffers to fill than when the burn process starts, and then the hard drive activity message for 15-30 seconds. And of course burning is paused during this whole time. Prior to the reinstall the hdd buffer stayed full and device buffer stayed basically full other than dipping down 10%-15% here and there. Even when the burners reached reached 12x buffers were staying full. Burn and verify had consistently been just over 12mins when burning on all 3 simultaneously. Can you explain the difference between i/o buffer and the write buffer? And how could I track down whatever is behind the hdd activity message? I can't find any other processes making use of the hdd. Fragmentation is 1% on system drive, 0% on 1.5TB drive. Read buffer is set to 100MB. "Test mode is not supported by the current media (dvd+r). I'm at a lost.

 

I'm getting a caution message about Duplex Secure's SPTD drive can have a detrimental effect on drive performance. That might be Daemon tools I guess, but I had the same version installed before and never experienced any problems. Possible issue this time around though? I missed going into discovery mode, trying test run again.

 

Oh well, same message about the media when trying to run test again.

Edited February 2, 2012 by Genaugmen

[Genaugmen]

Updated SPTD and uninstalled but no difference.

[LIGHTNING UK!]

Notice I did say you need to use DVD-R for the Test Mode thing, DVD+R won't do.

 

If you don't have any DVD-R then you won't be able to do any Discovery mode testing without wasting discs.

 

You could try enabling the 'Reading - Always Use Buffered I/O' option in the Settings (I/O tab).

 

If you have an Intel chipset board, can I assume you have the latest inf / chipset and (if the controller is in ACHI mode) 'Rapid Storage Technology' SATA controller drivers installed?

[Genaugmen]

Well, I downloaded newest drivers directly from the manufacture of my motherboard (Gigabyte)and now everything is back to normal. Buffer stays at 100%! Checking out resource monitor prior, I was only getting 11-12MB/sec from that drive during burning which is weird because speeds during something like copying files was normal. 3 different projects burned and verified in just a few seconds over 13mins!

 

Thanks for the assistance.