Slow burning with Mat-shi-tsa 845s on W2V

Hi,

I don't burn DVD's very much, but recently I burned the first DVD+R with my W2V. Although the Verbatim DVD was 8x certified, the burning process lasted 13 to 14 minutes (which is actually 4x ). First I thought it had something to do with the laptop (HDD fragmentation or something), but then I tried other Verbatims (16x certified) with my external HDD as the source, also resulting in a 4x burn speed.
I use Nero 7.0, which tells me the drive can burn at 8x and during the process it also reports burning at 8x. The drive is being recognised as a Mat-shi-tsa (without the hypens) UJ-845s, slot-in.

I couldn't find a firmware update, but Google found this:

"I can tell you my personal experience is that the PowerBook drives are VERY picky about media. (I have the Mat****a 845s SuperDrive)

Most media rated at 8x or about Toast and DragonBurn both report as 1x or 2x and burn accordingly. To be fair my external DVD burn often reports similar bogus speeds.

I have found that Verbatim 8x media at least reports as 8X both in desktop and PowerBook, however burn time on a full DVD is about 15 minutes (I will time next time but that is close.) (Oddly the newer Verbatim 16x media in very similar packaging will report only as 2x) That timing suggests an actual burn speed of more like 4x....I have used 4x media that reports as 4x and get similar times (HP media in that case.)

Anyone ever actually burned at 8x on a PowerBook...I have a ton of useless (well slow) media all rated much higher than I have ever been able to achieve in practice. If you get a burn time well under 10 minutes for a full DVD (4.7GB) I want to know what media you use.

Media that doesn't burn at 8x but should...

Various Generic 8x report 4x burn at 2-4x
Fuji 16x reports as 2x burns as 2x
Verbatim 8x reports as 8x burns 4x
Verbatim 16x reports 2x didn't even try to burn just returned
Maxell 8x reports 2x burns 2x
Sony 8x reports 4x burns 4x
HP and Sony 4x report and burned at 4x"

Does anyone have the same problem or know a way to solve it?

 

13-14 minutes is normal for a 8x laptop drive. Laptop drives are made with power consumption in mind unlike a desktop drive which is plugged into the wall all the time. There are a few drive like NECs and LGs which come in under 11 minutes using the correct media. You might want to try some Taiyo Yuden blank DVDs as they are the best blanks. Panasonic drives aren't the best burners.

 

That's a bit odd don't you think? The disc wasn't even full (4,3 GB or something), so a full disc would take even longer (around 15 minutes as stated in the quote). That actually is 4x "desktop"-speed, so it's downright misleading to rate the drive at 8x, power saving or not. Besides, when plugged in the wall there's no need for power saving, so that's no argument. Just my 0,02...

edit: this would be the same as stating "this is a 300 km/h car, but to save fuel it can never go any faster than 50 km/h". Then it's actually not a 300km/h but a 50 km/h car!

 

If you watch the writing speed indicator in Nero, the burning starts at a lower rate (2X?) on the inner tracks, 4X on the middle tracks and finally, if you are lucky, 8X on the outer tracks.

This is equivalent to your 300km/hr car accelerating from a standing start and stepping up a gear at intervals. It will take a finite time and distance to reach the 300km/hr and, roughly speaking, the average speed up to the time that it reaches the 300km/hr may be only half of the final speed.

John

 

hey you should be glad you're getting 4-8x ! Heh my W2v only burns at 2x no matter what. Firmware is D100. Seems people that have the 845s (on their toshibas, asus, acer) have this 2x burning problem i'm having. Yeap... 2x on any media =P

 

It does actually burn the very outside of the disc at 8x. For comparative purposes a desktop drive usually starts between 4-6x then quickly ramps up to 8x so it burns a much larger portion of the disc at 8x. Hence the faster burn times

 

The differences you are talking about correspond to the differences between CAV en CLV drives. If I'm correct my drive is a CLV drive where the disc spins at a constant velocity during the burning proces, because of this, the angular velocity is different (in the outer section of the disc more sectors can be written per second, which results in a higher burning speed and vice versa). Thus, there is a difference between 8x CAV (depicting the average speed) and 8x CLV (depicting the maximum speed) drives. Since CLV drives in desktops are extinct, it's still misleading to advertise 8x speeds in the W2V since in practice it's comparable to the commonly known 4x "desktop"-speeds.