Question Regardnig System Performance While DVD Burning

[Dre]

I've got a question. When you burn a DVD, does your system slow down while the actual burning process is going on? When I burn a DVD my computer will slow to a crawl and task switching is very very slow. It'll take like 30 seconds to switch from one open window to another. I was wondering if this was normal. Thanks for your input!


By the way, here are my system specs:

P4-1.6Aghz overclocked to 2.1Ghz
512MB RAM
WD 120GB SE Harddrive with 8MB Cache
HP DVD200i DVD burner

[jesoonster]

lol it's got to be your system man...........

i burn with 600mhz, 120gb 2MB buffer, 600ish mb of pc100 ram and my system isn't as bad as you say it is.

[padre]

Dre

It could be a matter of the DVD burning applicaton. I'm using a Pentium 4 1.9ghz, 512mb RAM with a Pioneer A03. Once burning has started, I can surf the web, use MS Word, everything. There is a momentary delay sometimes, but hardly noticeable.

Check out taskmanager and see how much the app is taking from the system - CPU, memory, etc. That'll give you some indicator. I use Prassi for my burning. Maybe it's less of a hog?

Padre

[Dre]

I've got the DVD Burner hooked up to my system on a Promise Ultra133Tx2 controller card. It's on the primary IDE channel of the controller card by itself. I use Nero to burn my DVD's.

I'm wondering if it's the controller card or possibly Nero. I guess I'll try burning with another App and/or moving the dvd burner to a IDE channel on the motherboard.

By the way, my burnt DVD's work fine on my DVD player.

[Ghamu]

Either you don't have the DMA enabled and you are using PIO, or something is seriously wrong with your system
With DMA enable, you should not be over 10% resources.

[colebert]

Might have something to do with your swap file.

-Cole

[Dre]

The DVD Burner has DMA enabled, it's using DMA Mode 2.

[brett]

There's no way that should be happening if you have DMA enabled. Of course, on-board RAID has all kinds of weird issues. Have you tried using a real IDE channel?

I've got an Athlon XP 1600 (not even overclocking it right now) with 512MB, and there's not even the slightest stutter when I burn at 2X.

Nero is also not the best thing to be burning DVD's with. Try DVD Decrypter.

There were some old CDR's that would monopolize the bus and lock resources, causing your system to bog way down and even freeze completely as they were writing the Lead-In. Maybe you're just having a similar issue with your HP burner. Almost everybody on this forum has a Pioneer, so it's not something that would get recognized right away.