Burn limited to 4X

[drose55]

I am burning a new set of archive CD's this week. Last week I made a set of 8 CD's with no problems. I made two sets. The first set was burned at 8X speed and the second set at 4X. My drive is a Plextor 12/20/32S and has a max of 12X.

Today when I started the new archive 8X and 12X were not available under the CD Burning Options. I am burning this set at 4X because there is no option to go higher.

Why were the higher burn speeds available last week but not today?

I just had a thought. As part of the process to get ready to switch to WinXP I upgraded the firmware of the Plextor a few days ago. Could this have caused ArchiveCreator to "see" my CD drive differently? I am running Win98SE currently.

[MichaelT]

The drive reports the speeds available to us. In some cases (more and more) the drive bases its speed choice on the specific media that you have in the drive. Please try some different media and see if the higher speeds return.
(And even if a media is marked as 24X, the drive may not see it that way. Sometimes those speed markings are based on marketing considerations, not technmical considerations.)

Thanks...

[drose55]

I am using the same media, Kodak CD-R Gold Ultima rated for 12X, as my first set. It even came from the same spindle as the first set I burned at 8X (where 12X was also available).

[MichaelT]

That certainly eliminates the media, although the firmware may see the media differently than the 12X it is rated, although the Kodak discs are of highest quality. The firmware is the most likely suspect.

We are also making changes in this area in the new DVD compatable version coming out shortly. Because of having to support both CDs and DVDs the speed setting has a totally new code base.

Please let me know if you want to receive the V2.0 private beta version which we should release in the next few days. Please reference this discussion.

ACBeta@pictureflow.com

[drose55]

I figured out what was wrong. When I started Archive Creator there was a CD-RW blank disc in the drive. I took it out and put in a CD-R blank but Archive Creator used the 4X limit of CD-RW. After rebooting and starting all over the 12X speed option is back. I should have done more troubleshooting before posting a message. Sorry about that.

While I am here could I ask if you have any opinion on using 12X to create an archive? Do you recommend a lower speed for burning critical data?

Thanks!

[MichaelT]

No problem..I amjust glad that the mystery is solved.

Regarding burn speed. As long as the computer is keeping up with the drive needs (so no under-run errors occur) there is no problem burning too high. In fact in some cases with some media burning slow is worse.

The main place people get into problems with is the following....

They have a burn-proof drive...so no coasters at any speed. So they set the highest speed. The PC can not keep up, but the Burn-proof saves the day and keeps things going. But at the end of the day, the disk has a lot of "burn-proof" links (gaps) which make the disk less reliable to read in the future. Also it takes longer to burn the disk this way than if they has set it slower.

In my Plextor 40X it takes longer to burn at 40X than at 24X because of what I descibed. So I always burn at 24X with burn-proof on to catch the few situations where the PC gets bogged down.

So the rule is...with no burn-proof drive, burn as fast as you can without making coasters on a regular basis.

...with burn-proof...burn as fast as you can without the drive writing burn-proof links.

...and always best to cache to HD first. That will lessen the chance of gaps or coasters.

I hope that this is helpful..

[John Marsh]

When using burn proof how do you know whether or not you are creating burn proof links?

[MichaelT]

John,

Good point..

In the burn page you can monitor the drive buffer. When it hits zero and then refills, you have written a gap.

Note that this is not an issue on DVDs because when they stop to fill up their buffer, they are capable of beginning the write again without leaving a gap (they carry on exactly where they left off...on a CD they carry on a little after they left off).