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I just bought put together a new system on a Gigabyte GA-7VAXP mainboard with a Toshiba SD-M1612 DVD-Rom drive (rev. B according to the firmware page).

After reading about its EXCELLENT DVD-data and movie speeds, I'm rather dumbfounded.

With DVD-Decrypter, and a store-bought DVD movie, it's reporting it'll take 27 minutes to rip a DVD unlike the 4 or 5 it did with my Liteon LTD-163.

With DVDSpeed, it starts of around 2.0x and makes it to 6.0x.

Any ideas as to why it's so SLOW? Every review I've seen shows it between 6x and 16x. Thanks for any ideas on this.

Is DMA enabled?

That I can confirm -- both drives are set up as "DMA if available" under Control Panel > System > IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers > Secondary IDE Channel.

Both drives read as Ultra DMA Mode 2 (DMA/33) which makes sense (as the other drive is my Lite-on 48x Burner).

I just can't make heads or tails over this issue since according to most specs I've read, a speed rate of 2.2x to 6x is EXPECTED with DVD-R media.

On both of the DVD movies, I've tried, it's stepped BELOW 2x to start (1.92x and ends around the same).

Makes ABSOLUTELY no sense. Although it seems to handle my DVD-R media better than the Liteon (which would spin up and down... DVDSpeed looked a lot like a stock market graph at points).

Any further ideas are appreciated.

This drive is rather slow at ripping, especially at protected DVDs. My revA Toshiba rips movies at around 2.0-4.5x speed...

how do i find out what revision of DVD drive mine is (i have the same DVD as you do SD-M1612
thanks
also which is better and can you change it
thanks again

The firmware page has all the info. In the Utilities section you'll find CDVDInfo which will show you the revision and date of drive's firmware. Insted of CDVDInfo you can use Nero InfoTool or any other info program that shows also the firmware's date...

I'm not aware of any pyhsical changes or improvements of different revisions. No, you can't flash revA drive with revB firmware.