16x DVD burning - ATA 33 vs. 66

I'm curious about that time. Is that by Toast estimates or by your own stopwatch?

I've used Toast to burn at 16x, it states in countdown mode that it will take 4 min. 34 sec but with a stopwatch app it really shows almost 10 minutes

With or without verification, Jules?

Gary

straight burn time, no verification.

I'd be surprised to see anything with a stopwatch on the ATA/33 buss in under 9 minutes, with a 4.36 GB file.

Hi

How many different types/brands of 16X media have you tried?

I had (until recently) the same DVR-109 w/v1.58 firmware in my G5, which has the higher speed ATA bus, and the drive still could not burn my 16X DVD+R media @ anything above 8X (using Toast Titanium 7.0.2) w/o the type of slowdown you describe.

The same media used in my new DVR-111D exhibits the same symptoms.

Unfortunately, I bought a spindle, and since I only use this for backup/temporary storage, I can deal with the 8X burns that the media will work at.

This would lead me to believe the issue is not the bus connection, but the media and/or media/drive combination.

I still plan to get alternate 16X media, just to confirm whether that resolves the issue in my setup. The DVR-109 is now in my old Sawtooth G4, so I can still test when I get newer media.

Hi

I would still tend to believe the media/drive combination is the cause, not the bus.

I just went out & bought some Sony (Made In Japan) 16X DVD-R discs, and even on the ATA-100 (optical) bus in the G5 they still take 5minutes (3:21 claimed), basically 12X, to burn 4.28GB data in Toast 7.0.2 when 16X speed is selected.

This is still much better than the substantial hangup/slowdown with my 16X +R discs, which would imply media-compatability over possible bus bottleneck...

I too had a problem getting my Pioneer 109 or a new 111D to burn as fast at 16x as they would do at 8 (12x with some media). There clearly was a bottleneck in the data flow. Activity Monitor showed HD read speed of the file being burned at 8-12x ramping up from about 12 MB/s to 30 MB/s while the attemp to burn at 16x would give lower HD reads varrying from 5-10 MB/s and dropping to zero at times.
Thanks to this thread, I connected the 111D to the ATA-66 bus instead of the ATA-33 bus and got full burn speed at 16x. My G4 MDD Dual 1.25 has two fast HDs in the rear on the ATA-100 bus and an older 80 GB HD on the front ATA-66 bus. I pulled the original 80 wire cable from the ATA-66 motherboard connector and replaced it with the 80 wire ATA-100 cable that came with my latest Seagate drive. The cable is a 16 inch 80 wire / 40 pin flat cable with connectors for slave at 10 inches and black master at the end at 16 inches. I reversed the cable, connecting the black (master) to the motherboard ATA-66 plug and the gray (slave) connector to the 80 GB HD in the carrier under the optical drive shelf 5 inches away. The remaining 10 inch section was just right to route up over the front of the optical drive shelf and diagonally back to the rear of the shelf where it could plug into the Pioneer DVD writer. Thus the replacement cable routes from the front HD carrier up over the front of the optical drive shelf, rather than the rear as in the original ATA-33 optical cable. If I didn't want to connect a fron HD, I could have just moved the original G4 DVD 80-pin cable over to the ATA-66 connector on the motherboard.
The optical drive carrier was then re-installed over the new diagonal ATA-66 cable. The cable was connected into the new Pioneer 111D, the power cable connected, and the metal plate at the rear of the optical drive carrier reinstalled. I left the original ATA-33 cable unconnected and stuffed into the lower optical drive bay.
Apple System Profiler shows the front ATA-66 bus with two drives: the Pioneer DVD and the old HD. Burns of full DVD (4.34 GB) now take about 6 mintutes (INCLUDING the 45-50 sec lead-in and 15 sec closure) rather than 10-13 mintues on the original ATA-33 cable!
If you have questions about the installation, I urge you to talk to a knowledgeable local Mac technician. Good luck and be careful.

G4 MDD Dual 1.25 HHz Mac OS X (10.4.6)