Buffer empty

[gadgarra]

I have just purchased and installed an LG model GSA-H55N DVD writer on my 6 year old Windows XP desktop.

 

I have successfully created an image file from disc (DVD-RW) and then written an image file to disc (DVD-R) using ImgBurn. However, both processes ran very slowly.

 

When doing the write, I noticed that the buffer (not the device buffer) frequently ran down to zero and the system had to wait for the buffer to refill before continuing to write.

 

Here is the log for the read:

 

I 07:13:58 ImgBurn Version 2.4.0.0 started!

I 07:13:58 Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition (5.1, Build 2600 : Service Pack 2)

I 07:13:58 Total Physical Memory: 785,904 KB - Available: 281,616 KB

W 07:13:58 Drive C:\ (FAT32) does not support single files > 4 GB in size.

I 07:13:59 Initialising SPTI...

I 07:13:59 Searching for SCSI / ATAPI devices...

I 07:13:59 Found 1 CD-RW and 1 DVD

[blutach]

I 17:59:34 Source Media Type: DVD-R (Book Type: DVD-R) (Disc ID: CMC MAG. AM3) (Speeds: 4x, 8x, 12x)

First, only use Verbatim or Taiyo Yuden media. What you have now is junk.

 

I 07:14:17 Destination File: C:\LG Vdr.iso

I 07:14:17 Destination Free Space: 13,429,112,832 bytes (13,114,368 KB) (12,807 MB) (12 GB)

I 07:14:17 Destination File System: FAT32

Secondly, about the buffer issue, you have a drive with little space left, formatted to FAT32 (think about converting to NTFS) and is probably fragmented to hell. If you are doing lots of other things which involve disk activity at the time of burning this will also be a factor. At the very least, defrag.

 

Regards

[LIGHTNING UK!]

Have you tried uninstalling the controllers in device manager as per the dma post in the FAQ?

 

If not, do so.

[gadgarra]

Thanks for the suggestions. I have uninstalled the IDE controller and done a partial disc defrag. This has certainly helped. I created an image file with an average read rate of 3.8X, compared with 2.1X yesterday. I then did a test burn with an average write rate of 2.3X compared with 1.3X yesterday. I still got "Waiting for buffers to recover" warnings.

 

I think I need to re-run the disc defrag. I let it run overnight, but it did not complete. In fact it seemed to have more or less stopped running during a "compacting" phase. I will re-run it tonight.

 

Thanks again for the help.

[mmalves]

Try JkDefrag (extract and run JkDefrag.exe and it'll sort most things out for you). By the way, when defragging it really helps having the most free space available

[fk0]

I have the same problem with my two pc;

on pc1 whenever another program touch the disk, es. opening an avi, the disk start to seek heavily and the buffer slowly empty then after a minute it reach 0% and the writing stop momentarily to fill the buffer, then restart writing and everything go fine untile another program just touch the disk, the it start to seek heavily for a minute until the buffer is totally empty; this mean that i can't touch the pc until it finish the work, i write dvd at 4x or 6x.

it's a quadcore with 4gb/ram xp_x64 and sata disk, copy files disk1 to disk2 reach 80mb/s , copy files to the same disk reach 30mb/s, with nero and two usb burner usb i can write 3 dvd with different data at 4x without underrun. cdspeed give 90 to 98% quality on scans, the writer it's a liteon 20a1 ata, the disks are seagate 500gb sata and hitachi 500gb sata connected to ich9

 

the second pc has a normal p4 and a normal xp, in this one writing dvd at 4x i often get two to four underruns

when i start writing the buffer slowly start to go down and after 30 secs reach 0% and it remain at 0% for minutes (it happended also that i didn't had underruns so i had the entire disk written with the buffer at 0%), so i usually see the writer buffer changing a lot.

copy files to the same disk reach 25mb/s over network it reach 20mb/s (firewire ethernet), didn't tested wih nero, i always write at 4x with a Nec 7173 sata , disk is seagate 500gb connected to ich5, defrag scheduled every night. previously i had a 250 pata disk and it was the same.

 

since it didn't seem a udma issue, antivirus, any tools etc, i can't understand what's goin on...

 

edit: i didn't reported this in the post; the average verify speed goes from 11x to 13x that it's very good....

Edited March 31, 2008 by fk0