Nero's Two Buffers? Different?

[21st Hermit]

In watching Nero burn a DVD several questions arose:

1] I notice there are two buffers in Nero, can someone please explain the difference if any? I know my drive has a 2MB buffer, do either of these show the drives buffer?

2] Does Nero create an image of the project on my C: drive? While buring a 8X DVD, I noticed that my source drive L: stopped long before the burn finished, whereas my C: drive kept winking until the end of the burn.

3] I have frequently seen the Used read buffer go to near zero during the middle of the project, also the Buffer Level will stay at ~90% but occasionally drop to single digits. Is any of that significant?

4] It took 10 min (9:56) for an 8X +R and 6 min (6:08) for a 16X -R, are those representative times?

[Boba_Fett]

One buffer (virtual buffer) is what Nero allocates out of your memory (up to 80MB) and then feeds into your primary drive cache (a measly 2MB), your hardware buffer. If you are seeing drops to zero ANY time, something is seriously wrong and probably resulted in incorrect data burned to your disk at the time of the drop.

[eric93se]

21st Hermit, you can try lowering the 'read buffer' in preferences (Ultra Buffer). Try 24mb (or some similar multiple of 8 ). Also check to see if your storage drive is fragmented.

[bobmitchell]

Funny...

I have been having problems with my LG GSA-5163D external drive via firewire. Nero installed with the ultra buffer at 71mb...where on my desktop 80mb. I would burn up to 12X and then the burn would stop and burnproof (whatever LG name for it) would kick in and slow the burn down to 2X and reclimb to 8X. I adjusted the ultra buffer on my laptop to 80mb and just did a burn...the burn speed stayed consistent and climbed all the way to 15.5X. I am going to do another burn in a bit ...but I believe that because my Laptop hdd is only 5400 rpm...allocating more ultra buffer helped me... I will repost after another burn

Bob

[21st Hermit]

21st Hermit, you can try lowering the 'read buffer' in preferences (Ultra Buffer). Try 24mb (or some similar multiple of 8 ). Also check to see if your storage drive is fragmented.

Eric,
Just where is "preferences" are you referring to Nero? I poked around all over Nero looking for preferences and/or Ultra Buffer and could find neither.

On a good note, I moved the NEC 3520A from the external enclosure connected to my laptop, to my A64 desktop, it does burn -R's now, just with various buffer problems.

Thanks for your reply.

Hermit

[eric93se]

.Eric,
Just where is "preferences" are you referring to Nero?

Hermit

start up "nero burning rom" (not start smart), then "file" then "preferences" then "ultra buffer".

hope it helps

[eric93se]

Personally I wish nero didn't use the hdd a second time to buffer the data. Today most computers have an abundance of RAM that should be utilized to buffer the data for writing.

[CCampbell]

Personally I wish nero didn't use the hdd a second time to buffer the data. Today most computers have an abundance of RAM that should be utilized to buffer the data for writing.

You can always set the Ultra Buffer to 1MB.

And Even though you have an AMD 64bit system with 2gig of RAMM, you can still get a buffer underrun due to a combination of possibilities. Such as a CDROM or DVDROM drive that is having trouble reading a disc that you are trying to copy; or another program on your system eating up the memory, etc...

The Ultra Buffer is there to prevent a buffer underrun from occuring if possible, as everytime the BunrProof, or similar technology is implemented, the recording process stops till the buffer on the recorder is full again and then starts to burn again. So instead of 24x speeds, you are getting 4x write speeds. I think most would prefer to take preventive messures to ensure fast write speeds, than have to deal with constant delays.

And as you mentioned, many computers now have plenty of RAMM and Hard Drive space, so it's not like 80MB is going to hurt anyone.

Just my personal opinion of course.

Regards,

Craig

[21st Hermit]

Eric & Craig,

Thank you both for your insights, today I made some progress.

Eric, I found the Ultra Buffer tab in a dialog called Preferences by clicking the Configure button . . . Go Figure. I set Ultra Buffer to 24MB, as you suggested.

When I burned a 8X +R it took ~30-45 sec less than before, and both the "Used read buffer" and the "Buffer Level" stayed at 90% or above. Do either of these terms correspond to Ultra Buffer and/or the 2MB drive buffer?

However, when I burned the 16X -R, both the "Used read buffer" and the "Buffer Level" bounced all over. The "Used read buffer" on several occasion went to zero. The net effect was the the 8X DVD only took 3 min more to burn than the 16X, 10 min vs 7 min. I assume this was the "burn proof" kicking in cause the delay.

Do you have any ideas I might try to prevent these low buffers, thereby speeding up the 16X burns?

Hermit

[eric93se]

Whether its 1mb or 80mb, its still using the hdd a second time.


21st Hermit, both of those recording times are a little slow for those speeds. If your burn quality is good, then don't worry so much about it. If your burn quality is poor then limit your burn speed to 8x or around there. The top buffer bar is for the ultra buffer (hdd), the lower buffer bar is for the dvd drive.

[21st Hermit]

A Solution Finally

I finally tracked down what was causing all the buffer problems, is was having the OS, WinXP, on the SATA drive. I tried the big, 250GB, fast SATA on both the MB SATA controller and a Belkin PCI SATA controller. The results were still the same, the "Used Read Buffer" would frequently drop to 20%, 10%, 0%. This would cause the drives 2MB cache buffer to drop to 7% kicking in "Burn Proof" slowing down the burn.

So in an act of desperation, I rebuilt the OS on an old slow 60GB IDE HD that wasn't getting much use. All the buffer problems dissappeared, its rare for the "Used Read Buffer" to drop below 95% now. I can now burn a totally full, 4.4GB, DVD in 6 min + or -, this includes lead-in, track, and lead-out.

-R's consistently burn 5 to 10 sec. faster than +R's, not that it really matters. I burn exact duplicates of each dataset on different brands and flavors, just my level of paranoia.

Hermit

[eric93se]

wow thats interesting. Something's up with the sata controller or whats built into that sata drive. What model sata drive is that anyway?

My old burner, an nec 2510a would have a couple fluctuations dropping the buffer down to near zero when burning at 8x regardless of what HDD it was reading from (sata or IDE udma6). On my new Benq 1640, the buffer stays above 90% regardless of what burn speed or HDD.

[pranav81]

Probably a problem with SATA controller drivers.



::Pranav::

[21st Hermit]

Probably a problem with SATA controller drivers.

Since I have SP2 loaded, wouldn't I have the latest SATA drivers?

This same box and SATA HD were used to stitch a GigaPixel Panorama [175 - 8MP images (5x35array)] the file got to 7.5 GB. Since I only have 2GB of RAM it had to go virtual to this same SATA HD. It took ~45 minutes for PhotoShop just to load the project. It never crashed or hickupped in any way, wasn't even that slow.

So that doesn't say bad SATA HD or drivers to me. My guess its the SATA - PATA exchange inside the Via chipset. But it doesn't matter now, no reason to go back.

Hermit

[dodecahedron]

Since I have SP2 loaded, wouldn't I have the latest SATA drivers?

no.

[pranav81]

dodecahedron is right.

You will have to get the new SATA drivers from the SATA controller manufacturer.


::Pranav::