losing buffer

[ric84]

Hi, I searched for the answer but couldn't find anything that helped. 

I apologise in advance as I am not technical minded and don't know much about technology.

anyways, I use IMGBurn on my computer and it works fine, copies a DVD in around 10 minutes and the buffer stays at 100%.

I recently bought a 2nd hand old laptop which I downloaded the programme onto but the buffer keeps going to 0%, literally as soon as it hits 100% then it falls back to 0%. I'm using an external harddrive for the file i'm burning (same as on my computer)

I've checked the i/o settings on both and they both are the same so I don't know why it's doing this on the laptop?

any help would be great and please keep in mind that I am not great at technology or tech speech haha thanks 

I know you're supposed to show the log but I closed the log upon start-up and don't know how to get it back up to copy it, I did re-start IMGBurn but the log didn't come up

[ThaCrip]

Well if you are burning data to a DVD from a external hard drive, even a USB 2 connection should be able to keep up since it's got about 30MB/s transfer rate which I am pretty sure exceeds DVD write speeds as 16x DVD write is about 22.2MB/s. so the buffer should not be a issue off the top of my head.

but one quick question... on the '2nd hand old laptop', how long does it take to complete a burn? because this will give you a good indication of whether the buffer is truly a problem or not. since I can't see log, taking a guess, the laptop is probably about 8x burn speed on DVD discs.

p.s. but if you just bought a second hand laptop, I would definitely wipe the drive and start fresh (with Windows 10 (possibly Linux depending on how old it is and what you want to do with it)) to guarantee everything is in good running order as you never know what the previous owner has on it with potential viruses etc. it's the only way I would trust using it with anything sensitive online. but since you said tech is sort of like hieroglyphics for you, then I am guessing this might be somewhat difficult for you to do.

Edited February 22, 2023 by ThaCrip

[LIGHTNING UK!]

Maybe it's running USB 1?

If you just leave it to complete, the log will show the average speed and that'll help.

You can access the log window via the View menu. The program automatically saves the log when you close it. You can access the log file itself via the Help menu.

[ThaCrip]

14 hours ago, LIGHTNING UK! said:

Maybe it's running USB 1?

Possible. but I would guess quite unlikely given the age of USB 1 devices at this point as you would probably have to have a computer no newer than early 2000's tops which at this point would be fairly ancient as pretty much everything will be slow on those devices at this point in time (as I would guesstimate for a more 'usable computer' anything older than mid-to-late 2000's is probably straight up ancient nowadays as just about all tasks will be painfully slow.

but not only that, but at about 1MB/s (USB 1) that would take a rather long time to burn a DVD and would be obvious something is not right even to non-tech types especially given the OP mentioned that his computer (I am assuming main computer) copies a DVD in around 10 minutes. USB 1 would be well beyond that.

anyways, the rest of what you said should pretty much bottom line things for the OP.

p.s. the last computer I had with USB 1 range USB ports was a computer from 2001 as my next one I built in March 2006 (it was pretty much high end 2005 motherboard tech) had USB 2 ports. even my current main PC (I bought motherboard in May 2012) only comes with USB 2 ports but I got a add-on PCI-E x1 card to get USB 3 on it.

[dbminter]

There's a way to tell a USB device's USB version.  Download USBTreeView.