Device buffer to 0 but I/O cache 100% ?

[maxxxp]

I've a notebook sony vaio Athlonxp 2000+ with winxp sp2 up to date, a new hdd seagate 120 GB , 1 GB of ram and a pioneer 111D into an external box usb2.

With imgburn 2.3.2.0 , i've set only the I/O buffer size to 256MB , the others options unchanged (default) .

When i write a image of dvd saved into hdd and i set a velocity of write greater of hdd max possibility, the device buffer goto constantly to 0 and burner into burnproof (and i think this is normal) , the strange that the I/O buffer of 256 MB remains to 100% ! In this way the 256 MB of buffer are ineffectives, however the burning session ends ok.

I think it's wrong this behavior, i've mistaken or i must set some others options ?

Thanks and sorry for bad english.

Edited June 30, 2007 by maxxxp

[LIGHTNING UK!]

Does the device buffer drop off slowly to 0 or is it always on 0?

 

A log of the burn might come in handy, along with the IBG data file.

 

As you've seen, the big buffer doesn't always help avoid buffer underruns - and of course it ties up RAM that the OS could otherwise be using. Interruptions normally stop transfers between the program (buffer) and the cd/dvd drive. Those between the hdd and the program (buffer) are fast enough to recover quickly.

[maxxxp]

Thanks for answer.

The device buffer drop off slowly , it goes up and down constantly because there is the burnproof enabled , but the 256 MB of cache doesn't drop off , like it's not present, it drop off only when the burning session ends, correctly.

If imgburn takes the data from buffer and the buffer from hdd, why the big buffer remains always full and the burner goes into burn-proof always, if i think the guilt is my hdd slow ? (if i write at slow speed like 2x-4x works fine, the cpu is always nearly empty )

I've attached a log of 2 builds sessions.

ImgBurn.log

Edited June 30, 2007 by maxxxp

[LIGHTNING UK!]

There's obviously some issue getting the data to your cd/dvd burner, NOT getting it from the hdd into the software's buffer.

 

Like I said, you'd be better off dropping the buffer size back down to 20mb / 40mb and letting Windows use the rest for whatever it needs it for.

 

Besides messing with DMA stuff, there's not much you can do if the machine just can't get data to the drive quickly enough. (Of course DMA doesn't apply to the USB device though)

 

Is your CPU usage high when burning? Have you tried creating an ISO and then burning that rather than burning lots of smaller files on-the-fly?

 

Any luck on getting that IBG file? Just click on the 'File' menu, then 'ImgBurn Graph Data' -> 'Export'.

[volvofl10]

I 20:55:27 Average Write Rate: 7.450 KB/s (5.4x) - Maximum Write Rate: 10.256 KB/s (7.4x)

 

This is pretty good for an external writer from a laptop anyway. the laptops hdd I/O speeds are a lot lower than a normal comparative desktop system