help cd burner wont burn

[janet]

I just purchased a sony crx160E. My friend installed it and also installed software called easy cd creator. I keep getting these error messages when I try to burn some songs. the first message is 1) write error- buffer underrun occured.
2)track error - flush failed
3)track write error - command retry failed.
What am I doing wrong? I am making sure nothing else is running. It starts to write but all I get is a couple of music notes and then thats it...Please help. Ive ruined about a dozen cds trying to get it to work. Should I delete the software program my friend installed and install the software that came with the cd? Any suggestions would really help thanks Janet

[SPEEDO]

Welcome to sysopt.

First thing to try is to go to roxio's Website and see if your burner is compatable with there software!!
http://www.roxio.com/

SPEEDO

[janet]

Hi Speedo,
thanks for the reply but what am I looking for when I go to the site. Im not really a computer person so you will have to guide me if you can. thanks...Janet

[SPEEDO]

janet

Well the first thing you should do is run disk defragmenter just to reorder the files on your system.
Before trying to burn you should type control, alt, delete then highlight and click end task on everything that's running except systray and explorer.
I'll check to see if your burner is comatable!!

SPEEDO

[crazyray]

That Sony burner works with Easy CD Creator 4.02d or 5.0. Check to see if your software version matches those...

Things to do to help avoid buffer under-runs, etc.

Shut off ALL other programs, including the screen saver. DON'T do anything else while you are burning the CD (such as surfing the web). Defrag your hard drive. Put the music files you are trying to burn in a single file. Slow down your burn speed. Make sure your blank CD-R's are compatible with your burning speed. (I believe the 160 will do 12x. The CD-R's should be compatible with 12x or above).

Sooner or later someone will tell you that Easy CD Creator sucks, and you need _____ instead. I've burned over a thousand CD-R's with CD Creator. If you have the right version, it will work. Good luck.

[daveleau]

Welcome to Sysopt. Glad you could stop by. hopefully we can get your burner problem fixed, Janet.
Good luck
Dave

[Target]

Might also help to know "how" you are trying to do this burn. Is it from your CDROM to the Burner? If so, then your source CDROM has be be able to perform the Digital Audio Extraction at a speed equal to or greater than what you are burning at. (provided you don't have burn-proof or some other technology on your burner)

Personally, I think that checking to ensure your burner is compatable with the software you are using is a good idea, as is checking to see if there is a firmware update for your Burner. However, before we really can pin-point the possible causes of your buffer under-runs, we need to know a little bit more about how you are trying to make this audio CD (ie: is source from the hard disk, another CDROM, are they in CDA/WAV/MP3 format, settings you have chosen in Easy CD Creator, etc).

[lesrub]

Try disconnecting the ide cables and see if it will boot and post

[Bovon]

Posted by lesrub

Try disconnecting the ide cables and see if it will boot and post

Welcome to SysOpt lesrub

Janet doesn't seem to have a boot problem, its her burning of music CDs that is the problem.

Janet, I know little about burning music, but from what I read, the guys that have the best luck is to burn to the hard drive first at a less than max speed...maybe try 4X to start with, this makes a file. Then burn to a new cd disk. When burning from a CD reader to the CD burner, the CD reader must have a fast read and buffer to do this without errors...many of the less expensive readers will not work properly for burning, altho they will read a disk just fine.

Some of the data type CD-R disks don't work too well with music. Try to get those that are made for music...they are better quality. Many of the CD-R disks found at discount stores are of a lower quality than others found at regular stores. All CD disk manufacturers make different levels of media...some for the discount places and some for normal stores...these cost more, but are of better quality.

Check out this site for more CD-R disk info.
http://www.cdmediaworld.com/hardware/cdrom/cd.shtml

[RobDalton]

Hi Janet

First off, let's go over what a "buffer underrun" is...
When you try to copy data from one cd to a cdr, the data first goes from the source cd into a buffer(usually 2 or 4 megs in size), then the cd burner takes the data from within the buffer and burns it onto the destination disc.
Now, if your cd burner writes the data to the destination disc at a faster rate than than the source cd reader can supply it to the buffer, then the buffer runs out of data and the cd burner is forced to stop writing to the destination cdr. This generally is a problem and referred to as a "buffer underrun".

Couple things to try:

1. (assuming you are trying to duplicate a cd directly from another cd) If your source cd reader is newer than a couple years, try going to the properties for that drive and enabling "DMA transfer". this will speed up the read speed of the source drive and could eliminate buffer underruns.

2. If that still doesn't help things, I think we are safe to assume that your source cd reader cannot extract the data fast enough for the burner to continuously burn the cd without running out of data in the buffer. Again, assuming this is the case, you'll need to tell the software to "burn from an image". This means that the program will copy all of the data on the source cd onto the hard drive, and then burn it from the hard drive onto to destination cd.
(your hard drive can feed data to the burner at a much faster rate than the source cd reader can)

Hope I was able to help without confusing the issue further.

Rob

[daveleau]

Nice first post Rob. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif
Thanks and welcome to the forum!
Dave

[RobDalton]

Thanks Dave. Long time reader, first time poster. :-)

[crazyray]

Good catch everyone...I forget that everybody assumes they must copy from disc to disc on the fly. If you are using Easy CD Creator and are just copying a disc, select "CD Copier" and use your Sony burner to both read AND copy the disc. The program will copy the CD to your hard drive, then stop and ask you to remove the original CD and place a blank CD-R in the tray. Close the tray and the burner will do its thing without any more fuss, letting you know when it is done. WARNING...some burners will stick the drive tray out and pull it back in as they are finishing; others will just leave it out. Look to the display for the message that your CD has been created successfully BEFORE removing the CD-R. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

[statiatech]

I have had this same problem in the past. If you are burning CD to CD the burner and the CD-ROM must be on different IDE channels.
If you use the burner for both source and destination, be sure that the burner is on a different IDE than the hard drive.
Good way to set things up if you only have 1 HD is to put the burner on the secondary IDE and the HD and CD-ROM on the primary.
As long as you keep the devices off the same IDE you should be fine.

Hope this helps

[FyberOptyx]

I always go for Scuzzy writers. Buffer never goes below 99% even when giving the hard drive some stick when copying from disk images

[crazyray]

Quote:

I have had this same problem in the past. If you are burning CD to CD the burner and the CD-ROM must be on different IDE channels.
If you use the burner for both source and destination, be sure that the burner is on a different IDE than the hard drive.
Good way to set things up if you only have 1 HD is to put the burner on the secondary IDE and the HD and CD-ROM on the primary.
As long as you keep the devices off the same IDE you should be fine.
_____________________________________________

I have a question. I have the primary IDE tied up with 2 hard drives. I happen to have an ATA 66 PCI card. Would I benefit from putting the card in, placing my DVD drive on it, and leaving my burner on the secondary IDE cable?

[RayH]

The suggestion that CrazyRay had of using the CD-RW device as both the source and target is an excellent idea. I use it for difficult recordings.

Also, see if there is a DAO and TAO setting in your Adaptec program. If so, use the DAO (Disk at Once). It works better than TAO.

Sometimes the problem isn't with the burner. The CD manufacturers include all kinds of things on their disks to make them hard to copy!

[ukulele]

I use an HP 8200 Plus burner on the same IDE channel with the HD using Easy CD Creater all the time and have never had a problem burning with a disk image. It did however take several calls to HP to get it work right in the first place. One of the main problems if I remember correctly was fixed with a patch and some bios tweaking. Check the burners web site for any updates for your burner and if that is a dead end, certainly try the software that came with the drive. Aloha, Ukulele

[MoxManiac]

A cheaper solution to SCSI would be to get a burner with burn-proof technology, i.e. a Plextor 12/10/32 or above.

I have the 12/10/32A model, and I couldn't make a coaster if I wanted to!

(You'll still have problems burning copies on the fly if your source and burner is on the same IDE channel. I always consider that a no-no myself, if copying on the fly is something you want to do)

[statiatech]

I have seen a burn work fine with both devices on the same IDE but you are just asking for trouble. I have a PlexWriter 16/10/40 which has burn proof. I tried to burn a CD with it on the same IDE as my CD-ROM(to test it out for the first time) and you should have seen the burn proof kick in. The buffer would dump very fast and the system had to work very hard to keep up. I still suggest trying the config of isolating your burner from whichever device you are copying from.