Optimize External DVD-R performance?

[EMPiRE]

16x speed burning does not mean that during the whole burning process the burn speed is 16x, it will startout with about 8x speed on the inside and 16x at the outside of the DVD+/-R, so in the end it should be an average of about 10-12x speed

You will never be able to truely burn @ 16x speed as your connected hd's can not burn @ 21MB/s (= 16x speed), so 8x/12x speed is about the max it can do, then it is weird that is can do only 3x (or was this measured at the beginning of the burn?)

But it does not explain the time difference between your 80gig & internal hd as a 7200 rpm disc connected to a usb2.0 port can do about 12-18 MB/s, even a 5400 rpm disc would do fine... so that would be more than enough to not notice any difference...

[DABhand]

Also dont forget that your external writer and HD are sharing the same bus.

This can affect burning speeds and buffer usage.

[Kenshin018]

Those were my thoughts exactly - I wasn't expecting anything close to 16x (my plan is to use this for now until I get a new tower to slide the burner into) but to burn slower than my old internal 4x Sony burning from 256mb ram and a 1.0ghz processor just doesn't seem right. The 3x max was through the entire 20+ minute process, it wavered between 2.3x and 3.0x throughout the entire burn.

Is there anything I can do to help build it up to at least an 8x or 12x burn? Is there any other info I can post about my system that might help figure out whats going on?

Thanks!
Nick

[Kenshin018]

Alright, I'm bumping my own thread...sue me. Any takers for an assist?

Thanks,
Nick

[Kenshin018]

Yet another update - I've removed the hard drive that was sharing the media tank with the Lite-On burner and attempted to burn a dvd without it in case it was causing some unknown trouble. It didn't help.

Argh.

Thanks!
Nick