LiteON 52/24/52 Owners

[Spazmogen]

Here's attempt # 2.

Win98SE
Adaptec 4.71 ASPI
InCD 3.51.61

Fresh, never been used 24x Verbatim RW disc.

Formatted with CD-MRW. I then left the system alone for approx. 1 hour to allow the background formatting to finish. (OK, I HAD to clean all 3 bathrooms, I was getting the evil eye from The Wife).

File information:
4,377 files in 71 folders.

Total size: 400mb (420,154,022 bytes)

Same process as before: CTRL+ click until I had all 71 folders selected. Right click "Send to InCD Drive".

Start time: 1:10:30pm
Finish time:1:15:04pm
total time: 4:34

Slightly slower than before, but the drive stopped writing at one point and the read light came for about 5 seconds. Then it started writing again. It did not do that the first time around.

eject time: 4 seconds.

3. How did you discover that CD-MRW formatting was finished?

I waited long enough for it to finish. I tested it about 2 months ago. I'm not 100% sure, but if you start Nero BEFORE you format the disc, you can check as you described. Otherwise, Nero wants to shut InCD down to gain control of the disc. In my previous tests, I think I timed the background formatting around 8 minutes with 24x RW media.

[KCK]

Spazmogen:

I'm puzzled by your results. Your latest 4:34 for 400MB agrees with 4:36 given for LTR-52246S in my table in

http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php ... adid=60252

whereas your previous 4:20 for 497MB interpolates into 3:29 for 400MB. So why was your previous result so much better?

Why did you write that "the drive stopped writing at one point and the red light came for about 5 seconds"? Don't you have a red LED light when writing as for LTR-48125W?

Further, I still don't know how you discovered that CD-MRW formatting was finished. What do you mean by "I waited long enough for it to finish"? Apparently this can't be discovered by watching LED lights alone. Were you assuming that 8 minutes were enough because of your previous tests? These tests were done with earlier versions of firmware and possibly InCD as well, so maybe they can't be extrapolated to your current setting.

So again, let me formulate my conjecture in more drastic terms: I believe that background formatting is a non-issue for recent Lite-On and Plextor burners, because the reported writing times don't really depend on whether background formatting is finished or not.

To verify this conjecture for your burner, could you run the following two tests?

The first test consists of the following six steps.

1. Create a directory with about 400MB of data on your HDD, say C:\InCDtest. (Then you will be able to "Send to InCD Drive" quickly, thus avoiding delays for file selection; further, this will make it easier to repeat your experiments.)

2. Format a fresh disc to CD-MRW.

3. After the InCD mounted message appears, send C:\InCDtest to the CD-MRW disc and measure the write time (you could also do it via ^C and ^V in Explorer).

4. Eject the disc via the InCD icon, and measure the eject time.

5. Run CD Speed quality checks (e.g., Disc Quality and ScanDisc).

6. Call up Nero| Recorder| Medium Info to check if CD-MRW formatting is finished. If yes, stop. Otherwise, remove the InCDtest directory from the CD-MRW disc (via Explorer or by running deltree/y *.* in an MS-DOS window) and go back to step 3, unless more than five (say) loops have already occured, in which case stop.

For the second test, use Nero| Recorder| EraseReWritable| Full Erase on the CD-MRW disc, and repeat the first test, starting at step 2 with this disc.

On another note, concerning your failure with EasyWriteReader, can you post the contents of your IOSUBSYS directory (obtained by running dir in an MS-DOS window) and an extract from your Nero log in a format similar to my listings in

http://www.cdrlabs.com/phpBB/viewtopic. ... 7767#47767

This could help in locating conflicting drivers.

[Spazmogen]

I'll try to answer your questions as best I can & as time permits (I'm @ work).

I followed the procedure that Alejandra describes in your topic from here: http://www.cdrlabs.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=7677 I did this about 3 weeks after getting the drive. I don't believe the results were ever posted as I was just leaving for Florida.

If memory serves me right (it's been nearly 6 weeks), I started Nero first, then formatted the disc with InCD. Then checked it with the Media Info Button. You can just refresh the window or keep closing and re-opening it until the disc is done formatting. The timing was done with my stop watch feature on my wrist watch. It was around 8 minutes until the formatting stopped. Yes, I sat there opening & closing the window every 20 seconds or so until it was finished. Nero will not start if InCD has control of the CD-MRW disc. So start Nero 1st then format the disc. Similarly, Nero will not format the InCD CD-MRW disc if InCD still has control of it. CloneCD gives me an option to ignore the error and format the disc anyway.

There's my 1st attempts at CD-MRW tests with 10x rated discs in my owner's review located here: http://www.cdrlabs.com/phpBB/viewtopic. ... c&start=25

I'll quote myself from that thread:

Remember, if you're transfering large 400mb files, why waste disc space & time by formatting with Mt. Rainier? Just use the whole cd-rw disc like you would use a cd-r disc!

As for your request for the additional tests: I'll try to complete them as time permits BUT they are the last thing on my 'to do' list at this point. I just upgraded to XP on Sunday night and don't have it running fully yet. (I've just got XP, printer driver, Netscape & Norton A.V. installed at this point). Combined with the 5, 12hour shifts I have this week, I won't be getting to the tests for about 2 weeks or so. It's the best I can do. If I can't get my ISA SCSI based scanner to work in XP, then I'll be formatting a 2nd time and re-installing Win98SE (from Ghost image) and setting up XP in a dual boot. In otherwords, it could be longer IF I have to dual boot my system.

KCK Wrote:

Why did you write that "the drive stopped writing at one point and the red light came for about 5 seconds"? Don't you have a red LED light when writing as for LTR-48125W?

I didn't say that. I said the read (green) light came on for about 5 seconds, then it continued to burn (red light).
Spazmogen wrote:

Slightly slower than before, but the drive stopped writing at one point and the read light came for about 5 seconds. Then it started writing again. It did not do that the first time around.

KCK Wrote:

I'm puzzled by your results. Your latest 4:34 for 400MB agrees with 4:36 given for LTR-52246S in my table in

http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php ... adid=60252

whereas your previous 4:20 for 497MB interpolates into 3:29 for 400MB. So why was your previous result so much better?

It could be any number of things: I have no concrete ideas.
Perhaps the speed of the source drive, types & size of files being transfered, background programs running, background formatting, media quality etcetera. All are factors to be considered.

Remember: I'm not interpolating anything. I'm simply reporting results.
I'm not a scientist. I don't look good in a lab coat.
I'm not even a computer professional. My system works the way it does and I'm happy with it.

I'm not interested in a scientific how & why explanation of InCD's inner workings. I'll leave that up to the software engineers at Ahead.

Some of your questions, I simply will not be able to answer for you.
I'll try my best though, but there is a limit to my abilities.

I'll post again when I have XP under control.

[cfitz]

I don't look good in a lab coat.

I shudder to think of it... I'm still trying to get over that photo Spaz briefly used for an avatar a little while back...

cfitz

[KCK]

Spazmogen:

Let me first try to clarify some misunderstandings.

1. Instead of your "read light", I read and wrote "red light"; sorry for this confusion.

2. My (twice repeated) question on "How did you discover that CD-MRW formatting was finished?" only concerned the particular test described in your final post from last Saturday

http://www.cdrlabs.com/phpBB/viewtopic. ... 7687#47687

Now, if I understood your latest post correctly, you only timed CD-MRW formatting about six weeks ago, but you didn't time it last Saturday. In other words, you didn't time it for the latest firmware. Yet your latest information that it took about 8 minutes for the earlier firmware is quite valuable; this is the first time I'm seeing any timing results for background formatting!

3. As for the additional tests suggested in my former post, I am sorry if it looked as if I wanted to put pressure on you; I didn't know that you are so busy with other duties. I may add that my old scanner doesn't work in XP, but you could look for W2K drivers, which usually work under XP. Anyway, my transition to XP was quite painful, so good luck to you!

In effect, the final part of my post is intended for other

LiteON 52/24/52 Owners:

Could somebody clarify how the Lite-On 52/24/52 burners handle CD-MRW background formatting with latest firmwares? How long does it take for background formatting to finish when a disc is left in the burner after initial formatting, and no heavy background programs are running? Does background formatting show up in the activity LED? Do timings for copying about 400MB of data depend on whether background formatting is finished or not?

[Action Jackson]

I just wanted to let you guys know that I haven't forgotten about you.

I'll try to find time to run the tests this weekend, but I just got my new harddrive shipped to me [WD 100gb SE] that I'm going to make my bootdrive to complement my other 180gb SE.

I'm also in the process of building up another computer and transfering stuff between 3 systems so that will take some time.

To try to answer some of KCK's questions that I quickly read over, Mt Rainier performs "background" processes where you don't see the burner light active. Before a Mt. Rainier disc is ejected, it says that it will take at least 30 seconds or so to eject. I'm not sure what's going on here as I don't fully understand Mt. R.

[Spazmogen]

KCK:
I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be offensive.

My upgrade to XP went surprisingly well (knocks on wood).

Even the ISA-SCSI card/scanner connection went well. Even after a reboot. I'd Ghosted the whole XP configuration just in case it didn't. No dual boot (YEAH !).

I'll have the remaining software installed in 24 hours.

I'll resume some testing then. With a little luck, I hope to have results by Friday or Saturday sometime.

[KCK]

Action Jackson:

I don't know if you have run any test, but to confirm that CD-MRW background formatting doesn't show up in the activity LED you could proceed as described by Spazmogen in the third paragraph of his post from last Tuesday

http://www.cdrlabs.com/phpBB/viewtopic. ... 8109#48109

There is no hurry.

Spazmogen:

No need for apologies; you didn't sound offensive, just a bit frustrated, and I could see why!

I'm just curious: did you upgrade to XP over 98SE, or did you make a fresh installation?

I hope you didn't install the latest WMP 9.0 together with its Adaptec/Roxio burning plugin; if you did, it will make InCD testing even more interesting...

[Spazmogen]

XP Upgrade version, but it was a fresh install. It just asked me to insert Win98 disc into the drive before it would install XP.

Media Player 8 is installed. I gather 9 has issues with Ahead's software from the way you're talking. I'll avoid it based on your reccomendation.

[KCK]

Spazmogen:

Earlier versions of WMP installed the Adaptec/Roxio CD-Burning Plug-in, which apparently could conflict with earlier versions of InCD. There are unofficial ways of uninstalling the Adaptec plugin and of blocking WMP from ever installing the Adaptec plugin; see

http://www.nwlink.com/~zachd/pss/pss.html

I don't know if these conflicts will occur for the latest versions of WMP and InCD. On the other hand, the MS information in

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/window ... eadme.aspx

implies that Roxio CD Burning is not available under XP for the latest release of WMP. Further, the only way of uninstalling WMP 9.0 under XP is via System Restore.

I will wait until other users report their experiences with WMP 9.0. And I believe WMP 9.0 isn't at the top of your "to do" list as well!

[KCK]

Spazmogen:

Apparently timing CD-MRW formatting via Alejandra's procedure from

http://www.cdrlabs.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=7677

and your variation from

http://www.cdrlabs.com/phpBB/viewtopic. ... 8109#48109

might not work now. Recall that Alejandra's post implied calling up Nero Medium Info after the InCD mounted message, whereas you started Nero before InCD formatting. I think I tried Alejandra's version, and it worked. Note that at the end of November, we were using Nero 5.5.9.17 and InCD 3.51.61.

Since you are busy with more important tasks, I put on your lab coat!

Here are the results of my latest experiment with Nero 5.5.10.0 and InCD 3.51.91 under XP SP1 (without any system ASPI), together with the latest version of EasyWriteReader (it shouldn't matter).

My LTR-48125W VS08 sits in an external enclosure connected via FireWire (IEEE 1394) to my notebook. The enclosure has a LED, which seems to blink upon channel activity (this is not documented).

Nero InfoTool reports Autorun on for my burner.

In InCD Property Sheet| InCD Page Settings, only "Format disc to CD-MRW" is checked (i.e., both "Do not display startup and RW mount messages" and "Safe Mode ..." are unchecked).

I used a fresh Datex CD-RW 80min/700MB 10x disc (with ATIP Lead-in 97m 27s 04f, made by Ricoh according to Nero InfoTool).

First, I started Nero and inserted the disc; then, however, the InCD icon didn't respond to repeated righ-clicks, so I exited Nero and got the useless InCD Disc Information prompt, which I cancelled. At this stage, the InCD icon had a red S-E arrow.

Next, I right-clicked the InCD icon and chose Format, etc. The intial formatting took 22 seconds, and after additional 8 seconds I saw the InCD mounted message, with the InCD icon having a green N-W arrow.

The computer and burner sat idle for about 3:20 minutes, after which the enclosure LED started blinking every 5 seconds (but the burner LED didn't light up even once). Then, after about 4:50 minutes, I heard the disc spin up, the burner LED blinked green, then red about 5 times, there was another spinup, and finally no activity after 40 seconds. I waited about 40 seconds before clicking the InCD icon to eject; the burner LED blinked green, then red twice, and finally the disc was ejected after 24 seconds.

The total time between the end of initial formatting and disc ejection was about 9:54.

Finally, Nero| Recorder| Disc Info said "MRW Disc Completely Formatted".

Thus background formatting took no longer than 10 minutes; most likely about 9 minutes (which would agree with your past timings for a faster burner and media).

Further, background formatting showed up in the burner write LED only in its final stage.

I don't know how to interpret the FireWire blinks which occured every 5 seconds during most of background formatting. Maybe InCD was checking if background formatting was finished?

Another conclusion is that, at least for my configuration, the current versions of Nero and InCD take over the burner completely, thus preventing each other from running simultaneously. This may be wise from Ahead's viewpoint, but unfortunately it may create additional difficulties in testing CD-MRW.

The above detailed write up just documents some features. Maybe somebody would be curious enough to run similar experiments with 52/24/52. I still think that timing of background formatting is of marginal interest only, because I believe that the speed of data transfers does not depend much on whether background formatting is finished or not.

[Alejandra]

Spazmogen:

Apparently timing CD-MRW formatting via Alejandra's procedure from

http://www.cdrlabs.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=7677

and your variation from

http://www.cdrlabs.com/phpBB/viewtopic. ... 8109#48109

might not work now. Recall that Alejandra's post implied calling up Nero Medium Info after the InCD mounted message, whereas you started Nero before InCD formatting. I think I tried Alejandra's version, and it worked. Note that at the end of November, we were using Nero 5.5.9.17 and InCD 3.51.61.

Just remember that I use DirectCD instead of InCD in W2k, but since the hardware is making the format I presume that the timing doesn't matter with wich program you use, but who knows certainly.

[KCK]

Alejandra:

The November thread http://www.cdrlabs.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=7677 was about InCD formatting, and you didn't write that you were using DirectCD.

If you have a faster Lite-On burner now, you could check whether your procedure or Spazmogen's variation (with InCD replaced by DirectCD) still works for Nero 5.5.10.0.

I also believe that timing results should be similar for InCD and DirectCD, both under W2K and XP; this could be checked if you gave results for DirectCD under W2K, and somebody else provided timings for InCD under XP.

[Alejandra]

Alejandra:

The November thread http://www.cdrlabs.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=7677 was about InCD formatting, and you didn't write that you were using DirectCD.

No, it was not. if you review the title of the thread it says: "Mt. Rainier (CD-MRW) formatting is getting faster?"

So no matter which software I/we used.

Anyway, I can do the formating with InCD on Win98, I don't want to install XP yet I don't like the Fisher Price look

I'll try with 4x, 10x, 12x and 24x media this weekend.