VERY SLOW Benq 1655...something's wrong

[DReborn]

I purchased two Benq 1655 and one of them (the master) performs beautifully. The other...is just plain awful. it took 13min to burn a 3gb image to a dvd compared to around 6min for the master drive. the bad drive will spin up and then slow down and even though it says it is burning at 8x 1100kb, it definitely does not "sound" like it.

i am on an nforce asus a8n32-sli board so i was wondering if i didn't enable something or i am missing something little.

i choose NOT to install nvidia's sw-ide driver but maybe I should have?

what confuses is me is why ONE drive (the master drive) runs perfectly and the other does not...makes me think it is hardware related.

[Ian]

A few things to try:

1. Check and make sure that DMA is enabled for both drives

2. Try the bad drive in another computer.

If the problem still persists, I'd RMA the sucker.

[DReborn]

Hey Ian...the master himself replied, thanks. =)

they are both on "let bios select" and ultra dma2 is greyed out/selected. for testing, i manually set the slave drive (the one that is giving me probs) to ultra dma2 just to make sure and i will see if that helps. but since the master is working fine on "let bios select" i am not too hopeful.. =(

[Ian]

Have you checked for DMA in Windows? XP has a nice "feature" that kicks a drive down to PIO mode if its having problems reading a disc. Here's our FAQ on how to enable DMA in XP:

http://www.cdrlabs.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=7625

[oslik3]

how about swapping master and slave drive ? make slave drive a master and vice versa. You may have to connect/relocate them differently as I beleive Master drive should on the end of the EIDE cable.

Then see which drive gives trouble....

[DReborn]

that's an interesting idea...right now the master is NOT on the end of the eide cable but i never thought it mattered.

so i guess it could be three things (other than the drive itself):

1. master needs to be on end of cable
2. connector on the end of cable is busted
3. mobo slows down the slave drive

did i miss anything? or should i just return it for a plextor? =)

[dodecahedron]

according to the specs the master does indeed have to be on the end connector, and the slave on the middle connector. but in practice it doesn't really matter.
it's more important if there is only one device on the cable, in that case it should be master and should be on the end connector. but again, in actual fact things will ofter work in other configurations.

[DReborn]

well i don;t know exactly what did it but things are looking good now. here's what i did:

i switched the master (working drive) to the slave and vice-a-versa. Then i made sure the new master (the old slave drive that wasn't working) was at the end of the cable and the new slave (old master who was working) on the middle connector.

ran some nero speed tests and both drives look good! I burned a CD and it was solid as well. does the 1655 really only burn at 40x? thought it was 48x.

[Ian]

ran some nero speed tests and both drives look good! I burned a CD and it was solid as well. does the 1655 really only burn at 40x? thought it was 48x.

It burns at 48x. Your media probably isn't supported at that speed.

[DReborn]

it is 52x cd-r's though...i am fairly sure 40x was the highest unless there was a maximum as well. does maximum mean 48x?

also, is 40min to burn 7gb onto a DVD+R DL at 2.4x a good time? I know 2.4x is not to the fastest but is that normal for that speed?

[DReborn]

ok, so weird stuff...only ONE of the burners can burn at 48x. the other one (the one that was initially giving me grief) can only burn at 40x. they both list 48x capable but as soon as I put in a cd the fastest setting is 40x. the other drive can burn 48x no problem.

just to be clear: the master drive is the one that can only burn 40x

[dodecahedron]

can you check if both drives have the same firmware revision ?

so far it sounds like it's a hardware problem witht that drive.

[DReborn]

yeah, just upgraded them both to the latest firmware.

i've never heard of a drive just not being able to burn at it's max speed but nothing else wrong.

i guess weirder things have happened...

anyway to test or make sure?

[DReborn]

still really slow drives...what's the best way to test them?