I installed a new Samsung 24x dvd burner after the old one was acting up. Installation seemed to go ok, it was just a matter of driver install. The problem is that this new one takes a VERY long time to burn a dvd. I would say it took more than 6 times longer than the old one. I didn't change any settings so I am at a loss. Any ideas?

Does the new model have a slower burning speed?
Burning speed is not the same as reading speed.

No faster. It has a 24x burning speed and a 16x reading speed. I believe the old one was 16x and 16x.

I found an article that says to go to device manager and make sure dma is used for the drives. I have done that and it is.

The DMA problem is something that used to happen more often -- certain disc-based copy "protections" would slow down drives. However that DMA fix information never helped me.

Check and make sure your burning software is detecting your drive correctly. If it still thinks it's using the old drive, a different model, that might cause a slowdown. There's also the possiblity that the new drive is defective and can't burn as fast as it should. I assume you're using the same DVD media to burn to as you did with the old drive.

Most DVD burning software allows you to choose your burn speed, so you could check what speed it's trying to burn at.


Are you sure you don't have that backwards?
It wouldn't explain why the new drive is slower, but the faster speed is usually the read speed.

Burning software has detected new drive correctly. When I Googled this problem I noticed everyone who was having the same problem,it was with a Samsung drive which is what I bought. Since we are only talking $17-$20 I think I will go back to an LG model and try that.

What model is it? In my experience it is *very* unusual for a drive to have faster write speeds than read speeds. In fact I don't remember ever seeing one. Admittedly it is years since I was in the market for one of those things:-)

It is: Samsung Electronics 24x DVDRW SATA Optical Drives SH-224FB/RSBS.

Here is what the specs for the SH-224FB say...

DVD+/-R Write: Up to 24X
DVD+/-R Read: Up to 16X

Jenny100 has a good point about the DVD Media you are using, most DVDs will Only Burn Up To a Maximum of 16x anyway, so regardless if your Burner says it can Burn up to 24X, you would not get that unless you buy Special DVDs that Burn higher, and I have not seen this, not that I was looking for it. I prefer to Burn my Important stuff at lower speed to ensure a Good and Reliable Burn.

Also as Jenny100 mentioned, it depends on your Software and what it allows you to do.
Another thing that could slow down your Burning speed is your Anti-Virus and/or your Internet Security Software, a lot of people have complained about "Product X" slowing down their Burning speed and they had to Disable their Security software while Burning.
And there are other Factors: Are you using the Latest Drivers, Firmware,etc.

And one last thing, I read a lot of reviews about your DVD and most of them were happy with it, so I guess it depends where you read the reviews.

Good luck with your New Burner.

With all do respect Starcom, I don't think the things you brought up matter because nothing was changed. It was a simple swap of units. Also I wasn't looking for reviews of the unit. I Googled the problem. I will let you know if the LG solves the problem.

Follow-up:
I installed the LG unit. Slight improvement over the Samsung but still not where it should be.Still 4 times longer than original unit.
Original unit-10min.
Samsung unit-1 hour
LG unit-40min.

Huhm, in what way was your old drive misbehaving? If your old drive and new drives are all acting up, there's probably a common, separate cause. A bad cable maybe? Hopefully not some sort of motherboard problem. If all else fails I'd go to an external USB drive. The one I use with my laptop burns 4 gig movies in about 8 minutes, so you won't lose any speed.

Albert

Hello Albert,
Old unit was starting to have problems right from the start. It couldn't read a blank disk and said there was problem at a certain sector. The blank disk would be fine in my other computer.