52x drives only burning at 13x!

[smashedgirl]

Before our memorex 52x burner went kaput, I tested the burn speed. it peaked at 13x, and I was incredibly disappointed. Then other problems started occuring so I never really solved this slow speed issue, and the drive killed itself and was replaced.

We're now using a SonyCRX220A1 52x burner, and it too only peaks at 13x. Its not a big problem, I'm never in a huge hurry, but now it's irking me because I know how much faster it COULD be.

Our computer surpasses all of the system requirements, and I'm pretty uninformed about other things that could cause this, so I was hoping someone here could help me out. What would cause both of the drives to burn at only 13x, and what could I do to remedy this?

My specs: WinME, Pentium 4 (1.5 Ghz), 128MB RAM, with somewhere around 20 GB free harddrive space.
System Requirements: Pentium II 400MHx or faster; Win98SE, Win2000 Pro, WinME, or WinXP; 64 MB RAM and 1 GB free HDD space.

Help!

[David]

Check to make sure dma is enabled.
Here is the link on how to enable dma under 98 if I remember corectly the steps should be identical or close to it.

[Inertia]

Hi smashedgirl,

I'll try to be quick before the rush to help you starts.

Usually, a burner slowdown that you are experiencing is caused by DMA not being enabled in the "spawn of Satan" WinME Device Manager.

Try enabling DMA for the burner and rebooting. Let us know if that helps.

[tazdevl]

What type of media are you using?

[smashedgirl]

Thank you for the suggestion Inertia. Though, enabling DMA appears to have actually caused other problems! CDspeed says it transfers now at 17x, but it burns slower than it did at 13x (10 minutes instead of 6 for the same CD) and it causes my computer to lock up until the burn process is finished.

the discs are philips 48x...but I've tried cd's off different spindles and also an imation 48x and the same problem arises, so I'm fairly certain it has nothing to do with the media.

[Inertia]

Although you have enabled DMA in Device Manager and still have (even more) problems, it is probably still a DMA issue. Behavior such as you are experiencing can occur when DMA is improperly implemented even though it may supposedly be enabled by the operating system.

Frequently, this problem is caused by the IDE drivers not performing properly to enable DMA throughput to the operating system. The other possibility is that the system BIOS setting for the drive IDE channel is incorrect and won't allow DMA to be initiated.

What kind of motherboard and chipset (usually VIA or Intel) do you have? If you have the manual that came with your motherboard, give us the model number of the motherboard.

It's quite possible that your IDE drivers need to be updated. In the meantime, check in the system BIOS to see that the IDE channel for the burner is set either to "Auto" (default) or "UDMA". If it is already set to "Auto", change it to "UDMA" if available. Sometimes this will force proper implementation of DMA from a balky setup.

[burninfool]

@smashedgirl,
If updating your IDE drivers doesn't help:
I would first install ForceASPI
Then reinstall your burn software.

Good luck...