Buffer Underruns On Burner

[arbok01]

I have A Ricoh 8x8x32 CDRW Drive(Using NERO 5.0.3.1), And The Only Way I Can Hook It Up Is To Put It As Slave To My CD-ROM(I/O Magic 52X),And It gives underrun Errors When Copying From CD To Burner.Is There A Way To Find Longer IDE Cables Somewhere So I can Put My CD-ROM As My Slave To My HD,And The Burner On Its Own?

Thanks

[This message has been edited by arbok01 (edited 01-21-2001).]

[This message has been edited by arbok01 (edited 01-21-2001).]

[crazyray]

Copying direct sucks... Your set-up is ok. Try copying the entire CD to your hard drive (image file), then burn that to CDR. And take your time...

[FrozenLiquidity]

Buffer Underrun errors are virtually unpreventable when doing a direct CD to CD copy.(unless your burnes uses JustLink technology) so just don't do it. Follow CrazyRays instructions.

FrozenLiquidity

[Barney]

My father records CD to CD all the time. But only at 2x. Also important is a reliable CD-rom player. My father uses a 24x Teac scsi CDrom player, the Afreey 50x he also has is ****. It gives read errors all the time.

Ronald

[Target]

I'm going to go out on a limb here, mind you its a very big and strong limb, and disagree with Crazyray and FronzenLiquidity on this one.....

Copying direct doesn't suck if you have the proper setup and components. I do it all the time, and without under-run errors http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

Of course, I am at a bit of an advantage in that my CDROM and CDR are both SCSI Plextor units, which helps a great deal. The CDROM also supports DAE (digital audio extraction) at speeds up to 12x....so the under-run errors I used to get with my old CDROM when burning are now a thing of the past.

However, getting back to the issue at hand, you really should try to get your CDROM and CDR on seperate IDE channels.....and longer IDE cables are available! Several vendors have them on-line for purchase. Cyberguys.com and plycon.com come to mind.

It might not solve every buffer under-run error you could run into, but having the source and burner on two seperate IDE channels will go a long way towards eliminating one of the major causes for them.

Since your burner likely does not have the new "burn proof" technology that some of the IDE burners are now supplied with, the importance of a high quality source CDROM is even more important.

You don't say what types of CD's it is you are trying to copy, but I can tell you that if you are trying to make a "back-up" copy of lets say a game.....something with both data and audio on it, then having a source CDROM that is capable of digital audio extraction at high speed is a must have. That was the problem I had with under-runs on my old (toshiba) CDROM. It could not do DAE fast enough to keep the burner buffer full. It would burn just fine until it had to make the transition from feeding data, to feeding the audio tracks, and an under-run would occur.

The newer IDE burners that utilize burn-proof technology work around those types of situations through their ability to "wait" until the buffer is full enough again to begin the burn process. Short of having either one of those, or a SCSI setup as I describe having.... you should look to your IDE channel switch idea first, a better source CDROM capable of DAE second, and a possible replacement burner third.

I will say that FrozenL and Crazyray are right, you can always make an ISO image of the source disk first on your hard-drive, and then burn from there.......but that isn't really the ideal solution I belive you are looking for.

[This message has been edited by Target (edited 01-22-2001).]

[Roy]

Another option I have seen work is to set the burn speed down a notch or two. It's still faster than making an image on the HDD (unless you're making multiple copies). Try 6X and see what happens. Now that they're giving away blank media, it doesn't hurt to make a few test coasters while finding the best settings.

[Target]

Crazyray....check your email brother http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/wink.gif

[crazyray]

Thank you for your thoughtful answer... My quick off-the-cuff answer is the correct one MOST of the time. Unlike you, Joe Sixpack is likely to have a more modest system. People tend to think of audio in terms of what they are used to...such as cassette recorders on stereos. You know, dub from your CD to cassette in real time. PC's give us many other options, in part dependent on what you have to work with. I CAN dub on my PC if I'm doing nothing else, at a slow speed. It actually may take less time to create the image and copy from there. Peace.