SLOW Optical reading and writing

[tombrewuk]

Hi thanks for reading.

I have had my Novatech PC for about a month now, and have been trying to figure out this problem:

My optical drives are burning and reading painfully slow!

Also, when a CD/DVD is being read, the computer seems to lag i.e. mouse movement, sound and menu animations etc.

I have tried to change the DMA settings from PIO mode but for some reason cannot and I have updated their firmware.

I've got a TST Corp DVDRW and a NEC CDRW

Using Nero Tools I've clocked the speed of the drives, which aren't great. The screenshots are here:

http://www.tombrew.co.uk/TSSTcorpCD_DVD ... B02_30.png (http://www.tombrew.co.uk/TSSTcorpCD_DVDW_SH-S182D_SB02_30.png)
http://www.tombrew.co.uk/NEC_CDRW_DVD_C ... S00_30.png (http://www.tombrew.co.uk/NEC_CDRW_DVD_CB1100B_NS00_30.png)

Any help would be greatfully received.

Thanks,
Tom

[Spike]

Hi

Sorry I can't actually help you but I can confirm that I have seen the symptoms you describe with the same motherboard. I bought a barebones system recently and built up a PC for the family. I basically had to give it to them before I had a chance to find out what was causing the problem. The DVDRW was the Novatech Sony 18x so different to yours.

I also noticed lag when doing tasks like clearing the recent documents list. It should be instant but was taking a few seconds, not sure if you see this?

I had the HDDs configured as a RAID Mirror, I thought it maybe something to do with this but ran out of time.

Good Luck

[Vwbus]

Hi Tom,

I have a similar system to yours and was also unable to change from PIO to DMA for the DVD drives.
I was unable to play DVD's smoothly and CD audio sounded awful.
After trying every "fix" I found online, I had an idea.
Took a gamble and purchased 2 SATA to IDE adapters (made by Akasa) and 2 SATA cables. Removed the IDE cable from the motherboard and DVD's and fitted the adapters and SATA cables to 2 SATA sockets on the motherboard.
Switched on and "hey presto" everything worked fine

Hope this helps,

Colin

[Taxation]

have you got it as acceleratde playback, or something along those lines