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Need Advice: Burning Multiple DVD's at once
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cdpietrio
Newbie
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1. May 2007 @ 03:47 |
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I just built a new computer. I installed 4 identical dvd burners with SATA connections to the motherboard. My cpu is a intel core duo e6600. I'm using Nero to burn one ISO img on all four drives at once.
I've had limited success. One drive always seems to fail, it's the same one so it might be faulty. But I'm not sure.
My real major problem is that it's taking about 50 minutes to write the three successful discs. I can write one at a time in less then 10 minutes! The whole point of spending the money on this was to increase my productivity.
I've been thinking about the problem for a while. I've noticed the buffer levels in Nero burning rom shift back and forth between two of the burners at a time. I have two 1 gig ram cards but I'm not taking advantage of the dual channel capability of my gigabyte motherboard only cause i noticed my encoding times were faster when running them side-by-side. Is this the problem?
I thought the drives would be able to write just as fast together as when I burn using just one? Was I wrong? Maybe I need to configure something to make them burn equally well?
Any advice would be appreciated. Maybe someone knows what's going on here.
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res2cue
Suspended due to non-functional email address
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1. May 2007 @ 17:42 |
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why would you need to burn more than one copy for a backup? Sounds alot like piracy to me.
Quote:
The whole point of spending the money on this was to increase my productivity.
Hiram 319
AF & AM This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 1. May 2007 @ 17:43
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cdpietrio
Newbie
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1. May 2007 @ 22:05 |
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Actually, I own my own DVD authoring company. I'm small, but growing. My specialty is interactive educational and tutorial DVD's. I need to produce 50-100 DVD's for my clients and I'm tired of the "one burn at a time" process.
Please, do not respond with insulting and narrow minded blabber. If you have any knowledge that would help me, such as "whether or not what I'm trying to do is possible", than please respond with that.
Now, on a more Progressive note...
I'm pretty sure (but not certain) that the problem with the one burner that failed all the time was due to the sharing of the power source for two of my 4 dvd drives. My top two drives are independently plugged into the power source. Until I get a new cable, the bottom two drives are sharing one cable from the power source.
I've switched my RAM to dual channel and noticed a small increase in efficiency, but I'm still not burning as fast as I would like.
I can burn a single DVD at 8x in about 10-15 minutes, but it takes at least 40 minutes to burn 3 DVD's at once.
I was under the impression that it was possible to burn multiple dvd's in the same amount time that it takes to burn a single copy.
Can any of the experts here tell me "if" and "how" this is possible?
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cdpietrio
Newbie
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2. May 2007 @ 00:31 |
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OK, I did a test with only two drives and my image burned flawlessly in less than 10 minutes at 16x!
I currently have one 750 GB hard drive with a SATA connection. I'm wondering what would happen if I put a second SATA hard drive in my PC. Would it solve my problem and allow me to burn 4 dvd's at once?
I would make two copies of my image, one on each hard drive. Then I would burn using two instances of Nero. I'm sure my cpu can handle it because burning the 2 copies at once barely used 25% of it's resources.
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MichaelP1
Suspended permanently
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2. May 2007 @ 00:41 |
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Originally posted by cdpietrio:
Actually, I own my own DVD authoring company. I'm small, but growing. My specialty is interactive educational and tutorial DVD's. I need to produce 50-100 DVD's for my clients and I'm tired of the "one burn at a time" process.
Please, do not respond with insulting and narrow minded blabber. If you have any knowledge that would help me, such as "whether or not what I'm trying to do is possible", than please respond with that.
Now, on a more Progressive note...
I'm pretty sure (but not certain) that the problem with the one burner that failed all the time was due to the sharing of the power source for two of my 4 DVD drives. My top two drives are independently plugged into the power source. Until I get a new cable, the bottom two drives are sharing one cable from the power source.
I've switched my RAM to dual channel and noticed a small increase in efficiency, but I'm still not burning as fast as I would like.
I can burn a single DVD at 8x in about 10-15 minutes, but it takes at least 40 minutes to burn 3 DVD's at once.
I was under the impression that it was possible to burn multiple dvd's in the same amount time that it takes to burn a single copy.
Can any of the experts here tell me "if" and "how" this is possible?
with the one burner your having problems with can you burn just one single dvd with no problems? also whats your system specs case PS ect. and your setup as far as master and slave on the drives?
ok you are going to need a really good power supply say at least a 600watt i would even go with a 750watt plus a case that runs cool with lots of fans heat is your enemy when your burning that many dvds at once. your burn speed is important to i wouldn't burn above 6x running that many burners.i run three burners at a time burning at 6x with no problems. also with what your doing you may need to invest into a duplicator
We shall go to the end,we shall fight in France,we shall fight on the seas and oceans,we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air,we shall defend our Island,whatever the cost may be,we shall fight on the beaches,we shall fight on the landing grounds,we shall fight in the fields and in the streets,we shall fight in the hills;we shall never surrender
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Senior Member
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2. May 2007 @ 00:51 |
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All his drives are hooked via sata,so there should be no master/slave dealing.But i do agree with you that he may look at the current psu he's using,to have one with higher watts but also the most important thing is to have at least one 12V rail with minimum 30A or two 12V rails with at least 30A combined,as it's the 12v rail which distributes power to the cpu,drives,hard disk,graphic card.
Vincent.
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cdpietrio
Newbie
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2. May 2007 @ 02:02 |
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OK, thank you for your responses.
I tried to burn off two hard drives as I explained above. Results were no better then my previous attempts.
As for the power supply, I'm not sure if thats the problem cause I got a 620 watt, but I could be wrong!
Here's my sys specs:
Gigabyte Case with extra cooling fans (3D Aurora Series)
Gigabyte galaxy liquid cooling system
--so heat has a new enemy, lol
Gygabyte Motherboard 965P-DQ6
NVIDIA EVGA 3D PCIe Graphics card w/512 RAM
Corsair HX620W modular psu
Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 2.66GHz 1066MHz FSB 4MB Cache
Segate SATA Harddrive 750GB
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cdpietrio
Newbie
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2. May 2007 @ 02:26 |
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I tested the drive that failed on me earlier burning two copies at once with that drive and the one on the same power cable and had no problems.
It's when I try more than two drives at once that I run into problems.
What I do notice when burning 3 or 4 at once, the buffer levels on Nero flop back and forth. Only two drives are at 97% at a time, the other two drives go down to 11% on the buffer meter. (obviously causing the slow burn times.
No drives fail when I burn 3 at a time, but it takes 3 times as long to burn 3 discs than it does for 2 discs.
I've tried to increase the buffer size in Nero but its already at its 80MB max.
Also, I'm running 4 identical DVD+/-RW burners (samsung writemaster)/not sure on the model number
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bratcher
Senior Member
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2. May 2007 @ 05:07 |
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Question. Ever thought about buying a DVD duplicator with 3 or 4 drives (plus the read drive) in it? That would work much better than doing it on your computer plus it frees up the computer for other tasks.
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cdpietrio
Newbie
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2. May 2007 @ 06:03 |
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Actually yes, I've been looking into building one with the drives I've already got. Problem is, I still haven't found a controller card that uses SATA instead of IDE connections. Not sure if they even make them yet!
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res2cue
Suspended due to non-functional email address
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2. May 2007 @ 07:18 |
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@cdpietrio
Sorry man, didn't mean to offend you, but it's not often we see "legit" people coming in here wanting to increase production if you know what I mean...
Hiram 319
AF & AM
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MichaelP1
Suspended permanently
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2. May 2007 @ 09:57 |
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cdpietrio, your specs. are fine. did you build the system yourself? i know i run three burners with no problems so i'm sure it can be done. i would check with your local inde PC shop to make sure you have the drives setup right for what your doing
We shall go to the end,we shall fight in France,we shall fight on the seas and oceans,we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air,we shall defend our Island,whatever the cost may be,we shall fight on the beaches,we shall fight on the landing grounds,we shall fight in the fields and in the streets,we shall fight in the hills;we shall never surrender
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Member
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7. May 2007 @ 05:58 |
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I see you've built a really nice system to try and handle your burning multiple DVD's all at once, but have you considered or looked into a dedicated stand alone duplicator? Do a search for DVD Duplicators...I've seen some fairly budget priced systems and you already own the burners(around the $500 mark)...just a thought.
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 7. May 2007 @ 06:01
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Staff Member
2 product reviews
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10. May 2007 @ 10:01 |
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It sounds like your problem may be the throughput of the SATA controller on your motherboard. If I were building a duplicator I'd almost certainly look for a good (probably server class) add-in card and make sure I knew that the throughput on it was enough for at least 1.5x what I needed for the drives.
If the SATA controller's throughput isn't good enough it's also entirely possible that there may be a firmware update that fixes it.
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