2 Meg vs. 8 Meg buffers

[BMR]

I am not sure if I am missing the point, but I have read several
times where members complain about a drive having a 2 meg rather
than 8meg buffer. However, what puzzles me is: what difference does
it make. When writting a DVD at 4X you are pushing data through the
bus at about 6 - 7 meg a second. If you get a buffer underun the buffer
will be cleared in a second in either case.

With the cheap cost of ram, would it not make sense to have a 32 or 64 meg buffer on these drives when data is moving so fast ???

Also, is it not possible that your own main memory or page file is acting as an extended buffer in case of buffer problems??? Hence the buffer size of the drive is errelevant ??

BMR

[dhc014]

Why use more when you can get by with less?

Any buffer other than the memory directly on the drive can't help you if the flow of data to the optical drive is stopped.

[eliminator]

Me like more, 8mb ... 16mb

[aviationwiz]

I like 8MB Buffers, but they both serve the same purpose, which is to save you from buffer under-run errors. I only got saved by a buffer under-run once on my Premium. Don't know what happened, but I got the message saying that it got rid of a buffer under-run error. Both work fine, just get whatever drive you want, it shouldn't get any buffer under-runs.

[CDRecorder]

Sure, it's nice to have a larger buffer, but as long as you have a reasonably recent computer, a 2-MB buffer shouldn't be a problem. My 52x Lite-On (7800 KB per second) is fine with a 2-MB buffer. I rarely ever see the buffer be less than 90% full when burning at 52x on my 1.2-GHz computer.

[eliminator]

more buffer, ah I like it - my new laptop Hitachi 60gig/7200rpm(!) hdd has an 8mb buffer ... one model Toshiba (5400rpm) has even 16mb buffer

... but sorry, I digress

[VEFF]

I am not sure if I am missing the point, but I have read several
times where members complain about a drive having a 2 meg rather
than 8meg buffer. However, what puzzles me is: what difference does
it make. When writting a DVD at 4X you are pushing data through the
bus at about 6 - 7 meg a second. If you get a buffer underun the buffer
will be cleared in a second in either case.

With the cheap cost of ram, would it not make sense to have a 32 or 64 meg buffer on these drives when data is moving so fast ???

Also, is it not possible that your own main memory or page file is acting as an extended buffer in case of buffer problems??? Hence the buffer size of the drive is errelevant ??

BMR

I agree that they don't matter much anymore.
When burning at 8X (over 11 MB/sec), 2 MB or 8 MB of buffer lasts less than a second in either case, so it doesn't make any real difference.

I actually wonder why they even have a 2 MB buffer (or bigger) at all, since at 8X, 2 megs of buffer lasts less than a quarter of a second...

[lgmayka]

It seems to me that nowadays, the primary purpose of a larger on-drive buffer is to compensate for users who want to multitask while burning a CD or DVD.

In the olden days of CD burning, expert advice was clear and insistent: Close all other tasks before burning, and do nothing else with the computer during the burn. I myself still basically follow this advice. Yes, computers have a lot more horsepower than they used to, but is Windows XP really so well-written as to give absolute priority to a DVD burn over all other tasks--especially when XP runs so many more processes in the background than 95/98/ME did? I myself have seen a fatal buffer underrun on a Pioneer DVR-103 drive in my XP-running computer; and even my latest DVD burner, an LG GSA-4040B, is sometimes reported by some programs as having no built-in buffer underrun protection, even though it supposedly does.

The bottom line is that drives must be robust enough--one way or another--to let us surf the Web, answer email, etc., while a CD/DVD burn is going on. Until that day comes, we still have to be careful not to disturb the burn. As others have pointed out, 8MB of on-drive buffer is better than 2MB but is still not much relative to the data flow speed.

[dburg]

For packet-writing the size of the buffer will allow smoother behavior. You have no risk of buffer-under as the recorder writes packet per packet, although, if the buffer gets empty the next write will suffer some delay for the laser head to go again to the right position. Additionally if you have a defect-management feature in your device (MRW, or DRT-DM for DVD-RW), this will consume buffer memory for the storage of the defects information. In such condition, a 2 Mb buffer is quite small.

[VEFF]

Thanks David.
Now it makes more sense why the buffer is still useful.
Too bad that more manufacturers don't increase the buffer size, especially
with memory and storage components being so cheap these days.

[aviationwiz]

I want a 32MB Buffer