8x4x32 CD-RW is so slow and buggy

[joe111]

I just bought and installed a new QPS 8x4x32 CD-RW drive. The drive itself is made by Plextor. I find that it has the same model number as Plextor PlexWriter. So, I assume that the drive should be as good as Plextor. My problem is this drive reads at a speed far lower than 32x. It reads slower than my old 12x Mitsumi CD-ROM drive that is installed in the same PC. When it writes or reads, it occasionally give a blue screen (error message). I use Adaptec CD Creator 4.0 and DirectCD 3.0 to do control the drive. Any comment would be appreciated.

[Mntsnow]

I would first check for FIRMWARE updates for the drive and 2nd check for updates for 4.0 to make sure it is recongizing the drive correctly.

Mntsnow

[Rickee]

Did you check the website to confirm that your cutter is recommended by HP/Adaptec? I know that some software has compatibality issues with some drives.

Second, check you bios to ensure that you have either auto/maximum setting for PIO mode for your drive (assuming it is IDE).

Third, check if DMA is supported. If so, click it on in the CD properties.

If all else fails, then consider the drive to be faulty.

Hope this helps.

[felix726]

what type of CPU do you have? EIDE CD-RW drives rely on the CPU to do most of the work for them so if your using a slow CPU then that may be what is giving you such problems.
-felix

[joe111]

Is Celeron 300 with 128 MB RAM fast enough to run a CD-RW drive? The motherboard is Tyan Tigercub 440BX.

[Wiz]

you should not use the cd-rw to read regular cds. A cd-rw is a lot less reliable and has many more errors when reading cd-roms. I forget the exact ratio, but a cd-rom is about 10^3 times less likely to have corrupted data when reading a cd.