I've suffered from this intermittent slow burning for some while now. Are you saying that the I'm dropping in and out of DMA/PIO mode when this happens ? If so, is there something that I can check whilst it is happening ?
There are so many reasons that your burning has slowed and almost all have been covered in this thread. Just read the post's... Here are some of the reasons..
1. Drivers/Firmware. Are they all up to date?
2. Clean the DVD recorder lens. There are comercial products out there.
3. Make sure your operating system is running smoothly
4. Check for Spyware/Adware and clean system.
5. What programs are always running in the background? Turn them off.
6. Any packet writing software (InCD) get rid of it!
7. Media?? Use quality media. TaiyoYuden, FujiFilm, Sony ect. Stay away from generic, memorex brands.
8. Make sure burner is set to DMA if available. To really make sure uninstall your IDE channels in device manager and reboot.
9. Use 80 wire 40 pin IDE cable to get full use of DMA higher than 2.
10. Most mother boards only support the DMA modes 4 & 5 in one IDE slot (the blue one) Could make sure your burner is hooked up to that slot along with your master hard drive. If your lucky and have newer mobo then both your IDE controllers will support Ultra DMA 4 & 5..
11. Defrag your hard drive frequently.
So there are many things you can do and check to try and increase your burning time. :-)
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Yes - I know there are many reasons. Note that I said "intermittent". I only occasionally see this behaviour. My question was just to establish whether I would spot the DMA/PIO thing happening DURING one of those slow burns.
Well intermittent is odd and has nothing to do with DMA if Windows switches to PIO mode it is because it is having problem burning in DMA mode and it doesn't just switch itself back. Could be spyware or adware, or lose connection of one of your cables possiblly?
I don't know if you can actually watch while you are burning to see if the drive is in PIO or DMA mode or not, but even if you could it would be to late to do anything about it by then anyway :-) Normally Windows will convert over to PIO mode when you have some errors while burning. If you have tried all the above mentioned things and still have the issue of intermittent slow burning it could be your writer is going on ya. Lets hope thats not the case :-) Last resort would be to format and reload Windows..
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Cable, schmable! One item that hasn't really been considered is that one of the hard drives may be going bad. Since the original poster had *two* drives in RAID 0 (disk mirroring), try breaking the mirror set and run off of each drive separately. See if your system runs better on one of the two. My system was getting slower and slower until I noticed the HD was getting hotter and hotter. Hello! I put in a new drive and the system now runs fast and cool.
OT: Is it my imagination or are the hard drives I'm seeing these days just getting crappier all the time? Maybe it's because the mfrs are cramming more and more capacity into the same geometry. Maybe production costs are forcing quality downwards. Whatever. I just seem to be replacing drives for me, my friends, and my co-workers almost annually.
ricster - The Windows switch to PIO mode, it does this after it fails (for whatever reason) to transmit at a higher speed, is transparent. If you go into the device manager during a slow burn you wont see anything different. But if windows can not get a fast burn after a long period of time it will change that setting and you will be able to see that your primary channel (or secondary) has changed to PIO mode. Since your problem is intermittent I would assume that windows wont change that setting and you wont be able to see this happening.
Now, my suggestion to you is make sure your burner is the only device on the IDE cable. If you still get poor consistency try replacing your IDE cable, 40 pin - 80 wire, if this doesn't fail keep trying one of BBMayo's suggestions (above) until you get the consistency you want. You may end up finding that your problem is not caused by any one single thing and that it will take a combination of many things to right it.
EDIT: Klezmorim - a RAID 0 array is a "Striping without Redundancy" array and it is impossible to split without a complete format reinstall. If you use a raid 0 array I would recommend periodic backups incase one HDD does go bad. Once one goes bad your data is lost on BOTH disks.
Jugbugs: You are correct. I was thinking of RAID 1. You'd think after 14 years in the IT industry I'd remember the difference. I guess that's why I'm in management ;)
Anyway, regardless of whether RAID 0 or 1 is used, one dying drive can slow things down. Also, because of the lack of fault tolerance in RAID 0 as you point out, if one drive dies data is lost on BOTH dies. Switch to RAID 1. You'll sleep better at night.
