Burning with Nero and Verbatim 2x dvd-r's

[hoops10]

I tried my first burn at 2x using a Verbatim 2x dvd-r with Nero 5.5.8.0 (the good ver for burning dvds)and a Pioneer 104 burner but I don't know if its working right. The Recorder Buffer Level/State is fluxuating big time from 98% down to around 19%. I've never seen it get that low before. My computer isn't slow, I have an Athlon 1.2 and the harddrive from which I'm burning from is a brand new 60 gig, 7200 rpm drive. The disc is only at 74% and its already been 34 mins burning. I know it takes about 50 mins to burn at 1x so I don't know if this is working.

The VIDEO_TS folder Im burning is about 4.35 gbs big.

What do you think?

[alexnoe]

2 possibilities:

The drive is in PIO mode, but your CPU doesn't make it. Would be strange, since my PIII/800 is able to do 2x burning in PIO mode. You can try enabling DMA then.

Or: The drive is already in DMA mode. Then you probably experience a very common error, which is cause by a firmware bug. In this case, you must disable DMA.

1x burning of 4,35 GB takes about 58min.

What is your CPU load at 1x burning?

[hoops10]

@alexnoe

Well, at 39 mins into it, I got a 'Burned process failed at 2x (2,760 KB/s)' and a coaster. Im using firmware 1.20 and I have to set it at PIO mode or I get burn fails at 1x. Is there any way to fix this? I would like to burn at 2x since I paid for 2x media. Thanks.

[alexnoe]

If DMA burning always fails (as it does for me), then there is no way to fix but to run it in PIO mode.

What chipset do you use? I don't hope it's a KT133A...you might have a change of getting it work by adding an additional IDE card. But I can't promise anything, and some of these cards won't work for burning at all (even if they are ATA/PI cards)

Your problem is definitely the transfer of the data to your burner, nothing else. It's really strange that a Athlon 1,2 can't do 2x PIO writing.

[hoops10]

@alexnoe

Now I just got a burn fail at 1x!! Damn, hopefully I can send these Verbatims back to the company. Im running a KT7a mobo but I dont know what chipset.

[alexnoe]

KT7A has a KT133A chipset :( The problem is that this is even bad among the VIAs...you can now try to reinstall windows 2000 (not 98/me!) and then do *not* install any via drivers. This could help.