Image and Device Buffer oscillation

[DanielRodrigues]

First of all, let me start by saying this is an awesome software... Simple, smooth, very, very good. Thank you for all of your work.

 

My question is, perhaps, a dumb one, but I'm curious, so I want to know a bit better.

I have bought a BW-16D1H-U Asus burner, in December of 2017. The burner is very good, and I only use top-notch media (only Panasonic, high quality Verbatim, or M-Disc from either Verbatim or Milleniata - ok, and a couple of m-disc from Imation).

The burner works fine, the burned BD-Rs work flawlessly, with no problems whatsoever... my question is, I had to change the HDD, and my power source. My old WD blue disc blew up, and so, I traded it for a black one (bigger warranty, more reliable) and an UPS, as a power source.

This newer HDD is quite a bit slower than my previous one,but I didn't trade it because of speed, but because of reliability(this one is tougher than the older one).

The disk is almost full, it's a 2TB hdd, with less than 100 Gb free, and I have almost 30 ISO files to burn.

 

The burning goes perfect (I choose always the slowest speed), at 4x to 4.2x, without errors, and resulting in a perfect disc (with top quality, when verifying with Optic Drive Control, or any other verification software)...but what I now see, that I haven't seen before (at least, that I have noticed) is that, when verifying against the source ISO, sometimes the Image Buffer goes all the way down, reaching 0, and the Device Buffer goes up, to 90 ~ 99%... Still, I've got to say that the verification works smoothly, no errors whatsoever, no warnings, nothing that states that's something wrong with the burn.

If I do a verification, without the "Against image" enable, I reach reading speeds over 12x, without any problem or movement in the buffer bar, and, I must repeat myself, there's nothing wrong.

My question is: eventhough the write process works perfect, and the verification process works, also perfect, is that oscilation normal? Perhaps that oscilation is due to the fact that the HDD is slower than the older one?

I guess "Image buffer" refers to the image file, ISO, so when the buffer goes down, could it mean that the HDD is acessing the ISO file with less speed than the reading on burner?

Should I be worried with that oscilation? Or, like I've said, since everything's working fine, no errors in the log, perfect burns, constantly, with fantastic low error values in other verification software, is just normal behavior, and this is working as it should?

 

I'm sorry for bothering you, and, once again, thank you very much, for your awesome work with this fantastic software...

 

Best regards, to all

ImgBurn.log

[dbminter]

I wouldn't be too worried about buffer variance in a Verify.  It only really impacts performance/quality during writes where waiting for threshold pauses might ensue.  Most likely, the culprit is as you say, the slower HDD you put in.  You could try putting an ISO on a flash drive or on a USB HDD if you have one and try burning from the flash drive/USB HDD as your source for writing.  If you don't experience bad buffer fluctuations, you can pretty much peg the problem on the slower HDD.

[DanielRodrigues]

7 hours ago, dbminter said:

I wouldn't be too worried about buffer variance in a Verify.  It only really impacts performance/quality during writes where waiting for threshold pauses might ensue.  Most likely, the culprit is as you say, the slower HDD you put in.  You could try putting an ISO on a flash drive or on a USB HDD if you have one and try burning from the flash drive/USB HDD as your source for writing.  If you don't experience bad buffer fluctuations, you can pretty much peg the problem on the slower HDD.

Ok, thank you... I'm not very worried, since in all tests I made so far, the burn passed with very nice values... But, just to be sure, I wanted to have another opinion... especially because this Asus burner of mine, just reached the 1000 burn mark.

Thank you very much

[DanielRodrigues]

Just figure out another symptom: this only happens when while in verification against image mode, the burner tries to go up the maximum disk speed... for instance, if I'm burning a disk, it burns stable at 4x, but when verifying, a disk that has a maximum speed of 12x, the device verifies it at 16x... still, no errors...

did another test, and disconnected the burner from my ups, everything went back to normal... so, it's perhaps, a question of power... ( I prefer to keep it on the UPS, just in case of a failure)

 

[DanielRodrigues]

So, this is my last log, with debug mode on...
I don't have any errors, but a lot of buffer entries... as I said, everytime a disk goes up the maximum supported speed (12x is the supported speed, but got lots of 16x verifies), the buffer goes up and down...

 

I know that there's nothing to worry myself up, yet, but I would like to know what's really happening...

Thank you all

logdebug.txt

[dbminter]

I might be slightly worried about your UPS.  I have my system connected to a UPS and I only see Device Buffer fluctuations on one model of drive, my Pioneer BDR-2209.  My LG WH16NS60 doesn't do that.  So, it could just be a peculiarity of your ASUS burner like it is with my Pioneer.  But, maybe your UPS is fluctuating power, which wouldn't be good.

[DanielRodrigues]

3 hours ago, dbminter said:

I might be slightly worried about your UPS.  I have my system connected to a UPS and I only see Device Buffer fluctuations on one model of drive, my Pioneer BDR-2209.  My LG WH16NS60 doesn't do that.  So, it could just be a peculiarity of your ASUS burner like it is with my Pioneer.  But, maybe your UPS is fluctuating power, which wouldn't be good.

It's possible that for me, things are the same... Does your Pioneer driver's burning flawless? I ask you that because, the drive inside my Asus enclosure is a Pioneer burner... I knew what model it was, but I know that inside Asus Bw-16D1H brand, is a pioneer :-) 

And I confirm that the problem had something to do with the UPS... My TSST Samsung drive doesn't behaves like that, and if I disconnect the UPS things work as normal... 

So, I reconnect the ups, and since every verification I've made so far, turns out good, I rather not risk hardware failures, due to power surges... Unfortunately that happens frequently, in my city... 

Thank you, my friend

[LIGHTNING UK!]

Did you say your new ‘black’ drive is slower than your old ‘blue’ one?

 

That definitely shouldn’t be the case. The blacks are superior to the blue models in every way.

 

Have you done any transfer rate tests on it?

 

It shouldn’t be struggling to stream enough data for a 16x verify operation. Of course if the drive is being accessed by other stuff, that could explain why it can’t cope. Hdds are no good at random access really.

 

I have my pc connected to a ups... no issues to note.

[dbminter]

Pioneer flawless?  HA!    Pioneer has borked the last 2 firmware revisions making their drives worse!     I used to recommend the Pioneer 2209 (The BDR-2209 aka the BDR-209M) as my go to BD model; not anymore!   I use the LG WH16NS60 now.  First, Pioneer introduced a bug in writing to freshly formatted 8x Ritek DVD+RW.  Verify will ALWAYS fail until the first write of media AFTER the 2209 has formatted it in a DIFFERENT drive.  Any other drive will write perfectly to the same disc, as will the 2209 once a different non 2209 has written to it.  Second, 2x Ritek Memorex BD-RE will always Verify at only 2x speed until near the end of the Verify when it suddenly jumps to proper read speeds.  The LG doesn't do this.  Then, with the latest firmware, Pioneer borked writing to 6x Ritek DVD-RW media.  It will always fail to Erase media and any attempt by the drive and firmware to do so will DESTROY the media!    It's useless for any further attempts to write to in any drive.  I had 2 discs and the Pioneer did this on both, so it's repeatable.  So, needless to say, I don't recommend Pioneer anymore because they don't know what they're doing with their firmware and refuse to listen to me when I try to tell them of the problems.  They blame that the media ID isn't supported, which I already TELL them is in the list they always forward to me before they forward it to me or they blame the age of the drive, which is only 2 months.  I will always recommend the WH16NS60 now and ONLY that, even if you don't need a 4k Blu-Ray drive because LG borked the WH16NS40!    It fails 9 times out to 10 to write double layer BD media.  And it's not just me.  It's repeatable with other users on this forum.  In the world of optical drives, we're dealing mostly with idiots. 

 

As I said, I get Device Buffer fluctuations on my Pioneer 2209 all the time.  That could explain yours, but not explain why it only does this when connected to a UPS.  My LG doesn't do that.  And maybe if I disconnected my Pioneer from the UPS, it wouldn't fluctuate either.  I don't have an enclosure to test it with at this time, so I can't say.

 

So, I'd recommend dumping that ASUS just because 1.) it's an ASUS  and 2.) it may have a Pioneer inside.  You may wonder why I'm bad on ASUS.  I had a USB ASUS BD; passed every test I threw at it.  So, I had high hopes for their internal model... which just destroyed DVD+RW and BD-RE discs!    This did this on 2 different units of the same model so it's a design flaw in the unit.  And then the USB drive finally went boobs up because it stopped writing 8x to 8x DVD+R DL.

[DanielRodrigues]

8 hours ago, dbminter said:

Pioneer flawless?  HA!    Pioneer has borked the last 2 firmware revisions making their drives worse!     I used to recommend the Pioneer 2209 (The BDR-2209 aka the BDR-209M) as my go to BD model; not anymore!   I use the LG WH16NS60 now.  First, Pioneer introduced a bug in writing to freshly formatted 8x Ritek DVD+RW.  Verify will ALWAYS fail until the first write of media AFTER the 2209 has formatted it in a DIFFERENT drive.  Any other drive will write perfectly to the same disc, as will the 2209 once a different non 2209 has written to it.  Second, 2x Ritek Memorex BD-RE will always Verify at only 2x speed until near the end of the Verify when it suddenly jumps to proper read speeds.  The LG doesn't do this.  Then, with the latest firmware, Pioneer borked writing to 6x Ritek DVD-RW media.  It will always fail to Erase media and any attempt by the drive and firmware to do so will DESTROY the media!    It's useless for any further attempts to write to in any drive.  I had 2 discs and the Pioneer did this on both, so it's repeatable.  So, needless to say, I don't recommend Pioneer anymore because they don't know what they're doing with their firmware and refuse to listen to me when I try to tell them of the problems.  They blame that the media ID isn't supported, which I already TELL them is in the list they always forward to me before they forward it to me or they blame the age of the drive, which is only 2 months.  I will always recommend the WH16NS60 now and ONLY that, even if you don't need a 4k Blu-Ray drive because LG borked the WH16NS40!    It fails 9 times out to 10 to write double layer BD media.  And it's not just me.  It's repeatable with other users on this forum.  In the world of optical drives, we're dealing mostly with idiots. 

 

As I said, I get Device Buffer fluctuations on my Pioneer 2209 all the time.  That could explain yours, but not explain why it only does this when connected to a UPS.  My LG doesn't do that.  And maybe if I disconnected my Pioneer from the UPS, it wouldn't fluctuate either.  I don't have an enclosure to test it with at this time, so I can't say.

 

So, I'd recommend dumping that ASUS just because 1.) it's an ASUS  and 2.) it may have a Pioneer inside.  You may wonder why I'm bad on ASUS.  I had a USB ASUS BD; passed every test I threw at it.  So, I had high hopes for their internal model... which just destroyed DVD+RW and BD-RE discs!    This did this on 2 different units of the same model so it's a design flaw in the unit.  And then the USB drive finally went boobs up because it stopped writing 8x to 8x DVD+R DL.

My Asus is an external drive... USB... As far as my own experience, all my burns made by it have better quality than the ones by Samsung... 

There's a couple of LG drives that are, also, Pioneer... 

9 hours ago, LIGHTNING UK! said:

Did you say your new ‘black’ drive is slower than your old ‘blue’ one?

 

That definitely shouldn’t be the case. The blacks are superior to the blue models in every way.

 

Have you done any transfer rate tests on it?

 

It shouldn’t be struggling to stream enough data for a 16x verify operation. Of course if the drive is being accessed by other stuff, that could explain why it can’t cope. Hdds are no good at random access really.

 

I have my pc connected to a ups... no issues to note.

As far as I know, there's nothing accessing the hdd... And yes, the black is a bit slower than the blue... The explanation given to me, by WD is that the "surface" of the disk consists in a single layer, and not in 2,like the blue one. 

That makes the disk, when full, a bit slower... What makes this disk better, is that fact that it is much more reliable than the others. 

But still, since the burns are alright, I don't worry to much... 

 

Just by curiosity, did you notice any thing wrong with my last log? 

Thank you for your help. 

[DanielRodrigues]

10 hours ago, LIGHTNING UK! said:

Did you say your new ‘black’ drive is slower than your old ‘blue’ one?

 

That definitely shouldn’t be the case. The blacks are superior to the blue models in every way.

 

Have you done any transfer rate tests on it?

 

It shouldn’t be struggling to stream enough data for a 16x verify operation. Of course if the drive is being accessed by other stuff, that could explain why it can’t cope. Hdds are no good at random access really.

 

I have my pc connected to a ups... no issues to note.

Isn't it weird that that kind of oscillation just happens whenever imgburn goes out of the maximum read speed allowed by the media? 

I only use Panasonic media, Japan import (MEI or MEIRA), with maximum read speeds of 12x (slowest 5x effective 12x). If the verification process keeps under 12,everything is fine, no oscillation whatsoever... But when it starts to oscillate, I get speeds of 16.9 or even 20x

On the good side, my writing process keeps stable at 4.1, when before, here and there, I had values from 3.5 to 4x

Burning the Nero, this doesn't happen... 

That's weird... But still m, your program is way better than Nero :-) 

[LIGHTNING UK!]

The graph data files are more useful for speed issues. Fluctuations in speed once you hit a certain speed are usually an indication you’ve hit the max of something in your machine.

[dbminter]

I've never heard of LG rebranding other companies' drives as their own.  I've seen other companies rebrand LG drives as theirs, but never the other way around because LG makes their own hardware.

[DanielRodrigues]

On 3/4/2019 at 4:36 PM, dbminter said:

I've never heard of LG rebranding other companies' drives as their own.  I've seen other companies rebrand LG drives as theirs, but never the other way around because LG makes their own hardware.

Yes, I thought so, too, but there's the https://www.lg.com/us/burners-drives/lg-BE16NU50-external-blu-ray-dvd-drive

This one was said to be a Pioneer drive, as my Asus one, in Club myce forum...

I'll attach a graph from one of the burns I did, that had oscillation on the verification... Yesterday I did two burns, and they didn't oscillate, but then again, they verify at 11,9x

ASUS_BW-16D1H-U_A203.IBG

[dbminter]

Oh, it's an external drive?  That might explain it.  IOMega never made their own external DVD burners, but used LG drives in their own enclosures.  Although why LG wouldn't just use one of their own drives in the enclosure doesn't make much sense.  I'd have to take the stories that LG is using Pioneer drives with a grain of salt.  Unless that drive is really old and LG didn't make their own drives back then.

 

I actually had one of those LG USB drives at one time, I think.  Had no problems with it.  Didn't last long; like most LG drives, only about 9 months.

[DanielRodrigues]

1 hour ago, dbminter said:

Oh, it's an external drive?  That might explain it.  IOMega never made their own external DVD burners, but used LG drives in their own enclosures.  Although why LG wouldn't just use one of their own drives in the enclosure doesn't make much sense.  I'd have to take the stories that LG is using Pioneer drives with a grain of salt.  Unless that drive is really old and LG didn't make their own drives back then.

 

I actually had one of those LG USB drives at one time, I think.  Had no problems with it.  Didn't last long; like most LG drives, only about 9 months.

I use an Asus, that "shares" the same drive, more or less... I think the LG one is a newer Pioneer model, than my Asus... I'm very happy with my drive, the burns are awesome, and when a launch them on opticDriveControl (I use TSST Samsung to do so, because my Asus doesn't supports testing), it shows fantastic values.

It's very good..

[dbminter]

I did a Google for that drive ID string and Pioneer and found no connection between the two beyond mentioning they were separate manufacturers of BD drives.  As I said, I doubt LG would use anyone else's drives in their own products since they make such products.  They'd be shooting themselves in the wallet missing out on cheaper production costs using their own equipment versus farming it out.

 

Same with ASUS.  As far as I know, ASUS makes their own hardware.  And it was the first drive I had that out of the box destroyed rewritable media.  The Pioneer now does that but only after a borked firmware update.

[DanielRodrigues]

8 hours ago, dbminter said:

I did a Google for that drive ID string and Pioneer and found no connection between the two beyond mentioning they were separate manufacturers of BD drives.  As I said, I doubt LG would use anyone else's drives in their own products since they make such products.  They'd be shooting themselves in the wallet missing out on cheaper production costs using their own equipment versus farming it out.

 

Same with ASUS.  As far as I know, ASUS makes their own hardware.  And it was the first drive I had that out of the box destroyed rewritable media.  The Pioneer now does that but only after a borked firmware update.

I will try to find the post stating what drives come inside both enclosures... I know I saw that on club myce, and it was related with some kind of issue with the capability to read UHD disks...

That will take awhile eheheh