Slow Burning with Phillips DVD8631

Question

After reading through numerous posts on the forum and trying a few of the suggestions listed to no avail i thought i'd post my problem and the relavant steps i have taken. I have a Dimension 8400 with a Phillips DVD 8631 DVD writer. Up until Weds of last week i had no problems burning Dvd's, it would take about 10-15 mins to burn a 4GB file @ x4 - i have had the pc for approx 12 months.. Never had a problem, burnt discs using Nero.. Then on Tues i had some problems with my Power Supply which was replaced by Dell on Thurs.. Since then when i try to burn a Dvd @ x4 it is now taking 2+ hours for the process to complete, i even tried x8 (max speed for the discs i have) and after nearly 1 hour was just up to 60% complete.. (This is with both Nero & Sonic).. Reading through the forum i noticed alot of threads relating to DMA - in my device manager under Primary IDE Channel i have Device 0 & Device 1, 0 has DMA enabled but 1 is PIO and will not switch to DMA (not sure if that is relavant) - i have tried numerous procedures to enable Device 1 but without success.. I have tried a System Restore to a date before the Power Supply was replaced, again with no success. I even did a Firmware update to GD30, and again without any change to the slow burning.. If anyone can suggest anything else or shed some light as to why this may have happened it would be much appreciated.. I have uninstalled both the IDE Channel & the Phillips writer through the device manager and rebooted so that they would re-install - again with no change to the slow burning speed.. And the final thing i tried was a Firm

Skybird · Answer

Enter the Set-up (BIOS) and locate the Primary IDE Channel.  Make sureboth channels are set to Enabled or On (whatever is appropriate).  Thismay be located under Drives.

Mav33 · Answer

Couldn't see the IDE Channel anywhere in the Set Up, under Drives were just 5 Sata items listed & the floppy drive..

Skybird · Answer

Under Drives you will find 0 to 5 (six total). Four are SATA and two are
PATA (Primary IDE Channel). Two of those are your CD drives. One is likely
ON and the other is not. My guess is the the Primary IDE Channel Device 1 is not ON,
therefore, it is in PIO Mode.

Mav33 · Answer

Oh yeah i see where you mean now.. Both PATA drives were set to 'ON' - it mentioned that the factory default was 'on' as well..

Skybird · Answer

PIO is the problem.  Go into the Device Manager and under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers,uninstall the Primary IDE Channel, then reboot and see if that will allow DMA.

Drakkula · Answer

Thank you. This really did the trick on increasing the write speed.

Storage, Drives & Media

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