Much better now.
I'm not sure what exactly fixted the problem. I enable DMA, defragmentet my HD..
and on top of all those things had to reinstall win2k.
Now, read buffer is constatly at full 100% and Burner buffer jumps from 98 to 92%(which is good), only one or 2 times thoughout the whole burn it jumped to 60%.
Instead of 26 minutes to burn a CD at 4x it now took 14 minutes :) much better stuff hehe
Thanks.

Strangly, Nero Reports that this DVD-R is automatically set to DVD-ROM during the burn.

(in reply to arith)

Good for you.

Rigth, sometimes you can try those things (DMA, defragment, cable, IDE bus/channel position) and might help to improve the performance.

Congratulation. 4x writing speed on DVD took 14 mins is quite reasonable.

Well done

(in reply to id3dwiz)

I have my 3500A for two weeks now. It worked fine under XP-SP1 with Nero 6.0.0.9. After my upgrade to XP-SP2 i'm experiencing trouble.

My firmware is 2.16 (although devivemanger firmware-version comes up empty). Since my SP2 upgrade i've upgraded Nero (incompatibility warning with XP-SP2 & Nero 6.0.0.9) to 6.3.1.25. Free harddrive space on C: is 538 Mb (was 2 Gig before SP2 upgrade).

I've noticed that Nero 6.3.1.25 says "Book type set to DVD-Rom". Can't recall having seen that with 6.0.0.9.

My buffer is dancing all the way, where it used to be stable between 96% & 100%. Read buffer goes from 100 to 7 en then backup up, and in the mean while the drive-buffer jumps all over the place.
Verification says "Data verification failed". Even one file inaccessible according to verification (i'm testing right now in a regular stand-alone DVD-player).
I'm running a P4, 2.66 Ghz with 768MB DRAM.

Could this problem have anything to do with the SP2 upgrade?!

(in reply to emperor)

Do you have DMA enebled? And probably ASPI drivers are help you.

(in reply to pjotter)

quote:

ORIGINAL: pjotter

ree harddrive space on C: is 538 Mb (was 2 Gig before SP2 upgrade).

Just to inform you that a copy of SP2 (when it's done from internet) stay in Windows\xxx\yyy (sorry, I did not remind me, but it's easy to find) and can be erased : you will gain 500/600Mb or more.

+ There's a "....\download ?\..." directory that can be purged too : again, 500Mb can be saved... when the SP2 install is made from internet

(in reply to pjotter)

Nice info!

(in reply to ItalianJob)

Probably the windows made a big swap file so you see such drops, i imagine, try to free some space

(in reply to Iggy)

Just don't zap the /windows/servicepackfiles/i386 folder

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,11152382~mode=flat

(in reply to emperor)

I've got three devices on two IDE-busses.
All set for "DMA, when possble". One is running "Ultra DMA mode 2" (this one is alone on its EDI bus). The other two are running PIO. I have to figure out which is which.

ASPI is not properly installed on my PC. Have seen that is can be complicated. So i wil put in some time to figure this out.

Thanx for the info.

(in reply to Iggy)

Thanx ItalianJob.

I moved the "$NtServicePackUninstall$" folder to another drive (might still want to uninstall when i don't get my drive to work properly).

This saved me another 500Mb.

(in reply to ItalianJob)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Iggy

Do you have DMA enebled? And probably ASPI drivers are help you.

quote:

drivers are

I've been playing with IDE cables and master/slave jumpers. NEC3500 and DVD player are both using "Ultra DMA 2". Harddisk is on same cable as NEC3500 and is using PIO. Still have to figure out if i can get it to use DMA. Also have more free diskspace again (>2Gb).
Nero buffer remains 99%-100% now when burning 2.4 speed. Recorder buffer is still jumpy. Still need to figure out Aspi though....

Thanx for getting me on the right way.

(in reply to Iggy)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Iggy

Do you have DMA enebled? And probably ASPI drivers are help you.

quote:

enebled? And probably ASPI drivers are help

Thanx Iggy. Your tips did the job. Although i had some trouble with the DMA stuff.
Installaing ASPI drivers and switching the burner to the same IDE-cable as the harddisk, solved the Nero Read-buffer problem. The recorderbuffer however still jumped up and down.

I noticed that my harddisk was in PIO mode altough the setting in the devicemanaegr was "DMA when possible". I couldn't get it to go in DMA mode. Unitl i read in http://www.michna.com/kb/WxDMA.htm that Windows XP is smart enough to put a device back from DMA to PIO when it experiences more than 6 read-erros on it. In my case it probably put every device on the first IDE controler in PIO mode. When i switched the DVD burner en reader from cable (put the burner together with the harddisk), both came up in Ultra DMA 2 except for the harddisk. After removing the named registry key and rebooting, my harddisk came up in Ultra DMA 2 again.

Now everyting runs fine again. Recorderbuffer remians > 94% at 2.4 speed. Compare after burning gives good result.

(in reply to Iggy)

Also you could unistall the IDE channel and reboot. It worked for me

(in reply to pjotter)

I just burned my first DVD-R with the 3500 (Intenso 8x media with manufacturer ID FUJIFILM03 with supported recording speeds 2x - 8x). The whole idea (!!!) was to burn at 8x (something I had already done plenty of times with the LG GSA 4120B)

...Well the recording took 14 minutes, which is about 4x or 6x writing speed or something and the buffer level dropped about 9 times down to 7%. This never happened before with the LG were the recording usually lasted no more than 8 minutes.

Also when I tested the disk (after writing to it) with nero dvd speed the reading curve wasn’t perfect near the end which I suppose means that the error rates are high at that point? On the other hand no disk I ever burned with the LG had such issues.

The 3500s firmware is the original 2.16.
Nero version is 6.3.1.25.

Does anyone have any idea about what causes this? (DMA, defragmentation and all that simple stuff are checked out!)

(in reply to Iggy)

Well, I thought I had the problem fixed, but only for 4x speed burning.
When I tried burning TY02 8X, FujiFilm DVD+Rs, at 8, 12 and 16x the recorder
buffer dance still happens, and burns take longer than what they should.
The higher the speed, the more buffer dance basically, I guess I'll have to
resort to using 4x. I've also noticed that the disk I've burned at higher speed...
skips the movie (played @ Phillips DVD642) for 10 seconds, quiet in few places.
Read buffer was stable though.

DMA enabled, hard drive defragmented, no other programs running.
Any ideas? System problem? Altough, it seems quiet a few people with this system problems with all role of thumb items (dma, defrag. etc) check out/ OR is it a faulty hardware by NEC?

It would be interesting to hear an official response from NEC. Maybe someone from the CDRINFO team could contact them, since they probably have some good contacts with the firm.
Thanks

(in reply to gi_viper)

i updated the original 2.16 to the new beta 2.27...and then burned a new dvd-r. this time quality and speed was improved.....actually it took exactly the same time to record the media (FUJIFILM03 8x) as in the cdrinfo review....however the buffer continued to drop to 7% a few times......maybe this is the way this recorder works?

(in reply to id3dwiz)