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Article Title: Better Burning Techniques

Article Author: Daryl Quenet
Article Category: Hardware Related
Times Read: 4384
Date: 2003-12-07 20:00:00
Pages: 1

It seems everywhere you look on the internet you'll find a different piece of burning software. Or you might have bought a cheap CD-RW, opened the box and found a piece of software you may never have heard of. And generally their not worth the CDs they come on. However if you opened the box and found a copy of Nero 5.5+ consider yourself blessed.

When burning CD-Rs/ DVDRs there is a lot of room for error in the configuration of your system. You may have been lucky so far, or you may be producing more costers then you care to admit to friends. Some of you may have even lent software to a friend only to have the CD be corrupt. Well your not alone, I just had a misadventure with my system configuration and my new Lite-On LDW-411S. When I plugged it into a Promise Ultra133TX2 card I was having issues with high CPU usuage, and errors in playback. Immediately bells and whistles went off, and the word DMA came to mind. DMA was a revolutionary technology Direct Memory Access, meant that certain I/O operations no longer needed CPU time to complete. This leaves more CPU for important things like playing your favorite MP3s while burning (system resources permitting). When I unplugged my DVD burner and then plugged it into a VIA onboard controller, it was off to the races. If your noticing these problems you can also look in the Device Manager under System in the Control Panel. Also make sure you have the current drivers installed for your controllers (usually a part of the chipset drivers), and not just the default Microsoft drivers (Ie VIA 4 in 1 drivers for VIA Chipset based motherboards). And a note I wouldn't suggest running your Burners on Promise based products, I was unable to find the DMA settings in the drivers anywhere.

Another important thing to check before burning another disc is verifing your burner is running the latest firmware. In the first month after I purchased my Lite-On burner they released around 3 firmware updates. These updates are very important they help recognize newer medias, which is vital to attaining full burning speed, and better quality burns. Firmware updates can also help to reduce damage to certain older burners. The DVD+R 4x standard was changed earlier this year, and if an older burner burned new media it could kill the drive. And don't forget to keep checking for firmware updates.

But configuration issues aren't your only woes, storing your blanks incorrectly can result in bad burns. Especially from dust landing on blank media. This is the reason I hold Nero close to my heart, when your burn a Data CD or even Video DVD, you have the option to Verify data after. To enable this feature just start burning your disc and click the Verify Data check box. This will add 3+ minutes to the burn process, some burners can take up to 10 minutes! I forget which version they added Data verification to, but always try to run the latest versions. I'de strongly recommend purchasing Nero 6.0 if your having any burning issues. A link to the Nero website can be found in the Links Archive, or try ftp://ftp2.nero.com/ to download. Current stable build is and 6.6.0.13, but they update there software nearly monthly so keep checking back!