DVD drive slow as molasses all of a sudden

[feralicious]

So my new drive is slow all of a sudden on dvds. It's only reading and writing at about 1.6x.

I was trying to get something off of an archived dvd-r and it wouldn't read it. But my laptop would. So I thought maybe I need to flash the firmware. I downloaded it, double clicked on it, and the window came up telling me I already had that version so I canceled. Now it's slow as molasses for dvds. It burned a cd-rw at 10x which is the highest speed of that media and is normal.

Anyone know what might have happened and how I can fix it up? I guess I can tell it to actually flash the firmware and see if that works, but wanted to see if anyone had any ideas first.

Windows XP SP2
NEC-3550a

[LocalHero]

A.) Make sure DMA mode is on. Some faulty data can cause it to revert back to PIO mode.

1.) Right Click on My Computer
2.) Click Properties
3.) Click the Hardware Tab, and then Device Manager
4.) Click the plus sign next to "IDE ATA..."
5.) Right click on either the primary or secondary IDE controllers and hit "properties". Here it really depends on what IDE channel If you have one marked "secondary IDE...", then I'm 90% sure that it is connected to that one.
6.) Now that your in the Properties tab of the either IDE controller, click on "Advanced Settings"
7.) Look at what "Current Transfer Mode" says. Post back with the results.


B.) Try different media. (in terms of burning)

[saltman]

Originally Posted by LocalHero

A.) Make sure DMA mode is on. Some faulty data can cause it to revert back to PIO mode.

1.) Right Click on My Computer
2.) Click Properties
3.) Click the Hardware Tab, and then Device Manager
4.) Click the plus sign next to "IDE ATA..."
5.) Right click on either the primary or secondary IDE controllers and hit "properties". Here it really depends on what IDE channel If you have one marked "secondary IDE...", then I'm 90% sure that it is connected to that one.
6.) Now that your in the Properties tab of the either IDE controller, click on "Advanced Settings"
7.) Look at what "Current Transfer Mode" says. Post back with the results.
B.) Try different media. (in terms of burning)

Those are very good suggestions. Is it holding the buffer or having trouble filling the buffer. My last dvd drive did what you described right before it went bad. Next stage was right errors and then power calibration errors.

[LocalHero]

Originally Posted by saltman

Those are very good suggestions. Is it holding the buffer or having trouble filling the buffer. My last dvd drive did what you described right before it went bad. Next stage was right errors and then power calibration errors.

Under PIO mode, the buffer would fluctuate, write speed would be slow, and there would be errors on the disc. I called Gateway about it. They didn't have a clue and sent me a new drive for no reason at all. All it was was a change of the modes, I eventually fixed it myself.

[AAR.oner]

my px716 drive has been acting up too [bouncing buffer levels, slow read/write speeds, etc], so i thought i'd check the properties like you said Local...

the Secondary IDE Channel says that both Device 0 is in "Ultra DMA Mode 5" & Device 1 is in "Ultra DMA Mode 5"...both are set to "DMA if available" for Transfer Mode

the Primary IDE Channel says that both Device 0 is in "Ultra DMA Mode 5" & Device 1 is in "PIO Mode"... but both are set to "DMA if available" for Transfer Mode...

so if Device 1 on my Primary IDE channel is set to "DMA if available" but still in "PIO Mode" how do i change it?

thanks for this info by the way

I had this happen once a year or so ago. I did EVERYTHING. Firmware, changed ever possible setting, etc.

Ended up just buying a new drive. Put a cdr in and had the same problem with the new drive.

Turned out, I had just gotten a bad batch of Fuji cdrs. I was shocked, since Fuji is typically so reliable. I went and got some new cds, and both drives worked perfectly.

[LocalHero]

Originally Posted by AAR.oner

so if Device 1 on my Primary IDE channel is set to "DMA if available" but still in "PIO Mode" how do i change it?

Every computer is set up differently. So on some machines your CD/DVD drive could be connected to your primary IDE channel, and sometimes it could be connected to your secondary.

You question is the exact problem I had. I set it to DMA if available, rebooted and it stayed in PIO. To get it back into DMA, I figured out that you can actually delete the device (Win XP SP2), and then when Windows reboots it will automically re-install the device with the proper mode. (DMA) Try that.

[feralicious]

Originally Posted by LocalHero

A.) Make sure DMA mode is on. Some faulty data can cause it to revert back to PIO mode.

1.) Right Click on My Computer
2.) Click Properties
3.) Click the Hardware Tab, and then Device Manager
4.) Click the plus sign next to "IDE ATA..."
5.) Right click on either the primary or secondary IDE controllers and hit "properties". Here it really depends on what IDE channel If you have one marked "secondary IDE...", then I'm 90% sure that it is connected to that one.
6.) Now that your in the Properties tab of the either IDE controller, click on "Advanced Settings"
7.) Look at what "Current Transfer Mode" says. Post back with the results.


B.) Try different media. (in terms of burning)

Aha! I think that's it! For my secondary (which I believe is where my drive is since it's on it's own cable and not on the same cable as my system drive which I would assume is on the primary) it had it set for Device 0 (which my dvd-r drive is) as PIO only and Transfer Mode as PIO. So I changed it to DMA if available, I'm going to reboot and hope that does the trick. Thanks! I heard about this before but would never have remembered it.

[feralicious]

After the reboot it still says Current Transfer Mode PIO only and it's taking about 8 min. to copy off a 780mb show from a DVD. Hm... maybe I delete my driver and reboot.... that sounds familiar....

[feralicious]

Found new hardware but still says Transfer Mode PIO only.

[LocalHero]

Originally Posted by feralicious

Found new hardware but still says Transfer Mode PIO only.

How old is the drive/computer?

[feralicious]

The computer... who knows... it's homemade and I replace parts as needed. I just put the drive in a month or two ago. It was working fine until a couple days ago. I wonder if when I went to flash the firmware and canceled since it wasn't newer something happened? I guess I should flash it.

[LocalHero]

Originally Posted by feralicious

The computer... who knows... it's homemade and I replace parts as needed. I just put the drive in a month or two ago. It was working fine until a couple days ago. I wonder if when I went to flash the firmware and canceled since it wasn't newer something happened? I guess I should flash it.

That is really odd...I've run out of things to blame it on.

I was about to say that it might be a faulty IDE cable, but not after two months.

[feralicious]

Ah you just reminded me... I was going to reseat (?) the cable. I'll try that now first.

[nkramar78]

Another fix I've found to make the switch to DMA:

Run REGEDIT. Go to the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

It has subkeys like 0000, 0001, 0002, etc. Normally 0001 is the primary IDE channel, 0002 the secondary, but other numbers can occur under certain circumstances. You have to go through these subkeys and check the DriverDesc value until you find the proper IDE channel.

Delete MasterIdDataChecksum or SlaveIdDataChecksum, depending on whether the device in question is attached as master or slave, but it can't actually hurt to delete both. Reboot. The drive DMA capabilities will be redetected.

If you're wary of deleting the values altogether, it is sufficient to empty the content of these values. But you can also delete the values entirely - Windows will automatically recreate them anyway, with new content.