DVD bottleneck

[Buford]

I have question I would like some help pondering.

I have 2 DVD-R drives on an ATA100 bus. (see system details below) I like to archive DVDs to disk using DVD Shrink.

Now nothing seems to be CPU limited in the process. I can put in one DVD and analyze & encode at ~ 5,600 KB/s. But if I put a DVD in each DVD drive and run two instances of DVD Shrink at a time each they run about the same total bandwidth and the process takes about twice as long, each process taking one virtual CPU at ~ 25% utilization at max priority.

This is only about 1/10 the bandwidth of the memory or raptor hard disk. What is halving the speed when I do two DVDs at a time? The old ATA100 CD/DVD interface?

If I was certain that was the bottleneck I might invest in a pair of SATA DVD burners.

Thanks

[Buford]

bump ....

Bump ....

[Bullitt]

Do you have both DVD's on the _same_ IDE channel?

If you do, move them. Put one on primary one on secondary.

If they are on seperate channels, check the device manager for the properties. Make sure that you have them set for "Use DMA if available" instead of PIO mode.

If you have all that set, update chipset/IDE drivers for your mobo. Make sure you have the latest ones.

I'm covering basics, but just in case.... :D

[Buford]

I only have one ATA100 channel, I could put one on ATA133. (I have 8 SATA)

Drivers are all new.

I will check "Use DMA if available" instead of PIO mode.

thanks

[Bullitt]

Put one of those DVD's on the ata133 channel. You are definitely staturating your IDE when using both DVD's on the same IDE channel.

Swap one out and you should see a marked difference.