odd cd burning problem..:-/

[impostal22]

recently bought my computer from cyberpower...and so did my friend. shortly after he bought it, whenever he burned a cd, the used read buffer would max out at 49%, and the recorder buffer level/state would range from 14% to 98%..it would constantly change. i laughed at him, but now it's started doing it to me. i've had my comp for like 3months now, and it just started doing it...it starts out ranging from 98% to 100%, but then around 1/3 of the waythrough, it starts going berserk. it takes a lot longer to burn CDs, and i think it's a sign something's horribly wrong with something....not to mention sometimes the process seems to freeze momentarily...AND i hear some weird noises coming from the burner drive (sorta like a faint clicking). anyway, why the HELL is my computer all of a sudden using only 50% of the burner's capabilities, etc?

[impostal22]

ps- what i just described is when using nero...i just tried clone cd...and it starts out at 99%, then gradually slips lower and lower and lower. also, with clone cd it reads out how fast you're burning and it maxes out at like 16x. yet i picked 40x to burn at. i really don't get this.

edit - as the buffer went down, the speed went up to like 21x....sigh?

[mcveighr]

Thats highly strange, call the company you bought it from.

I was going to suggest clone cd but...

[impostal22]

anyone else have input?

[PyRo]

Umm, stop buying computers from Cyberpower?

[BlackHalo]

Type of media

I'm assuming that you buy proper media for the speed you're burning at. Try buying one disc that's not the special of the day and seeing what happens. Not all discs are built the same. It's funny seeing my friend complain about his burner going 'bad'. When I checked his media the recording surface was delaminating and coming off of the disc.

Make sure nothing else is running in the background that might affect transfers from your HD to your burner. The buffer should stay filled unless your HD is off doing something else. If it takes longer than normal, then that's your burner saving your media from becoming a coaster. In the old days if your buffer emptied the burn failed.

Hope this helped.

-edited part-
If you are copying from a disc, try making an image first then burning from that.

[Can_Opener]

Well, the reason why it can probably only clone at 16x is because it has to read the cd from a different drive, which may be a little slower. Unless you only have 1 drive, then I've got no idea what is going on.

[RT pRo AuToMaG]

make sure the CD's you are buring the data/music to are rated to go at the speed that you choose to record at.

[PyRo]

Yeah talk about crap CD's all of the music CD's I burn are pretty much wrecked after about 2 years of and they were taken care of well. I only buy good CD's now, they may cost more than $5 for 100, but they don't die so quickly.

[impostal22]

these are high quality cd's, or so i'm told...got them from yesbuy.net...and they work flawlessly for my friend. they're designed to handle 52x...i burn at 40x always (my burner is capable of 52x as well). also something else i started noticing is that after they burn they sometimes get this weird looking pattern on the top, like a bunch of squiggly lines. i've burned almost 50 cd's (these cd's) with this burner, and it only just started acting up recently. the quality of the data is perfect, it's just that the buffers aren't staying at 100% anymore, and then the burns take longer, plus it just scares me that it's no long consistent at all (% used goes from 14% to 100% and all in between very sporadically)....HELPPPP

[BlackHalo]

Virus scanner?

Was there anything running in the background?
Did you install anything in the last month? Virus Scanner?

[impostal22]

there was a lot running in the background, but that was never a problem before. only stuff i've gotten in the past month have been lots and lots of stuff of kazaa and demos of games....considering the cd's actuallly look different on the tops after burning makes me think it's not a software problem...maybe?

[BlackHalo]

Disable as much as you can...try it in safe mode if you can. If that fixes it then it's one of the programs you installed in the last month or so. Just because it was a problem before, doesn't mean it's still not a problem.

On CDs, the recording surface is pretty much painted on the top of the disc. The cheaper the disc, the thinner that recording layer. Get that layer thin enough and you'll be able to see the change in the dye.