Sony DRU-500A and IDE buses

[boblx2]

Guess what gang? I have never been able to get my Sony DRU-500A to burn at 4X. I have bought several vendor's offerings of the Ritek 4X and none of them would burn more than 2X! What I noticed that did not look right was the CPU utilization on XP. It was up around 100% all the time it was burning and it would repeatedly drop to almost zero making a sort of ringing effect on the CPU utilization chart.
Since this system was not cabled like the system here that has a Sony drive that works I decided to re-cable it. This is what I wound up with:

1. The C: drive and the Sony burner are on the primary IDE bus.
2. The Pioneer reader and a pluggable drive are on the secondary bus.
3. The D: drive is on a added Maxtor bus.

Now it readily burns at 4X! Not only that but the CPU utilization now varies between 4 and 7 %. What an improvement.

Thanks to all of you who have given me information and encouragement for the last couple of months. I never would have believed the placement of a drive on a bus would make a difference in how fast it burned.


Thought some of you might like to know.........

[HyperYagami]

This is what I wound up with:

1. The C: drive and the Sony burner are on the primary IDE bus.
2. The Pioneer reader and a pluggable drive are on the secondary bus.
3. The D: drive is on a added Maxtor bus.

what was your setup before?

[boblx2]

I should have included that information, sorry.
I basically swapped the burner and the D: drive.
Before it looked like this:

1. The C: drive and the D: drive were on the primary bus.
2. The Pioneer reader and the pluggable drive were on the seondary bus.
3. The Sony burner was on the Maxtor bus by itself.

............

[HyperYagami]

3. The Sony burner was on the Maxtor bus by itself.

You mean a seperate PCI IDE-card? I thought that's a no-no...

[boblx2]

Well I suppose it is a "no, no" for Sony drives. But I have used it succesfully in several systems. It is made by Maxtor to support extra IDE channels. Of course they do not show up on the system support data, such as WINMSD, etc. You can also use them in a RAID configuration. But I have not quite bought into that RAID technology. I have tried it but there was not enough speed increase to justify the means. But they work fine for extra drives.

...............

[dodecahedron]

Well I suppose it is a "no, no" for Sony drives. But I have used it succesfully in several systems. It is made by Maxtor to support extra IDE channels. Of course they do not show up on the system support data, such as WINMSD, etc.

it's a pity you didn't divulge this information before.
after reading all your posts, i feel your pain and aggravation.

it's well known, well at least it's been discussed quite a few times on these boards, that optical drives don't work well on PCI IDE cards. at least, many times there are problems.

glad things are working for you now, enjoy your 4x experience!

[Solr_Flare]

I've had no problems here and I'm also running the DRU500a off its own bus. I've got my hard drives running in my RAID IDE ports(not raided just using the extra slots and the DRU500a i the primary IDE and my other DVD-rom drive on the Secondary IDE...all running as masters. Works nicely.

[boblx2]

Since I rearranged the hardware on the buses the 4X problem seems to have disappeared for all software except DVD Decrypter. Now it burns my 4X meda at 1X! I have not been able to figure this one out but until I do I can burn images on Stomp. So it appears that all of the 4X media I have been getting since 4X came out works ok on both the Sony and the A05. It is only a problem on DVD Decrypter and I will probably learn what I am doing wrong with it very soon. Sure is nice to burn a DVD in 14 to 16 minutes though instead of an hour. Of course I still have lots of 1X and 2X media that will need to get used up before I buy any more 4X. Most of this was just to get the burners working.

............

[Pradeep]

I've had no problems here and I'm also running the DRU500a off its own bus. I've got my hard drives running in my RAID IDE ports(not raided just using the extra slots and the DRU500a i the primary IDE and my other DVD-rom drive on the Secondary IDE...all running as masters. Works nicely.

Having the drive running on the on-board primary or secondary should be fine, the problems can occur when you use an add-on IDE controller.

[boblx2]

Pradeep, I guess I am living proof of that! Since I put the Sony on the primary bus as a slave it burns any 4X media that I put in it. I would never have believed it could effect the burning speed unltil it happened to me.
I still am having trouble with DVD Decrypter but Stomp and Nero have no trouble burning at 4X now. Also Stomp or Nero can burn images and that was mostly what I was using DVD D for.

I guess I learn something new every day! (Some days I manage more then one thing but it's a struggle! )