Copying files to discs (live file system) is EXTREMELY slow

[Persons Can Wai]

I've been burning discs using the Windows 7 built in burner using the Live File System option, but when I drag and drop files to DVDs and the copying files window comes up, it's extremely slow. Like 1.29mb-2.49mb per/sec slow. Any ideas? This can't be normal, it takes a LONG time to for the files to just copy over. When it comes to ejecting/burning the actual disc though, it's really fast so no problem there. I'm also asking this cause if it takes that long to copy over, would that affect read times later on, copying files OFF? Logical but I've yet to test it.

Not sure what else to say. Windows 7 SP1 x64. I've looked for answers already before posting this but no luck. do use UDF 2.50 instead of the default 2.01. Would that influence it any? I did some research and the metadata partition of 2.50 should help in case any of the discs get damaged and need to be recovered, but since it adds complexity, do you think it could be why the copy stage is so long? Once I had a copy session where the speed jumped up to 4.53mb per/sec but it seems like leftfield. Not sure if that one was formatted for 2.50 or not.

Edit 1 (April 12 2012): Quick status update. Just sent some files to a disc that I had started a udf 2.50 session on, one of the slow discs, and it was running at 4.51mb/s transfer. That's new, even for small files it was never that fast. The disc sounded like it stayed running at full speed longer too, it usually would spin up, but then slow down to the point where it's making almost no noise. I think it was so slow before. This time the disc also opened in explorer much faster. I have changed two two things since my last post (both done a couple a couple day ago): 1, I am keeping the discs in a spindle I have. Perhaps they are much more sensitive to debris and a LACK of than I thought. I also uninstalled Daemon Tools along with the STPD drive it comes with and then deleted all the registry entries that accompanied it (only LEGACY would not let me do anything, even after trying to change permissions). I had v1.62 of that on my computer and that harkens so far back that DT was giving a warning saying that it may negatively affect drive performance when installed. Perhaps it did negatively affect me. I read other things that say SPTD should actually INCREASE drive sped though, but maybe that's only hew newer versions, and I'm not taking a chance on that since I don't even use it.

UPDATE 2: Maybe I spoke too soon. 46s to transfer 78.6mb to the same disc happened. And this isn't even starting from the beginning, just when I thought to myself "lets time it". Windows was reporting 800-973kb/s. Ridiculous.

 

[Tekno Venus]

This could be due to the disks you are using. DVD disks come in speeds between 5x to about 32x. What speed are your disks? If the speed is low, try buying some faster disks.

Stephen

 

[Persons Can Wai]

They are non branded Verabatim DataLifePlus 8X DVD+Rs. I even updated my drives firmware. What are your speeds though? Mind trying to see? I just can't believe how this could be normal.

 

[Tekno Venus]

Ok, I have no blank disks availible at the moment to try it out myself but from past experience it should not be that slow. This: Understanding DVD -Recording Speed states that 8x speed DVD's should transfer at about 10.5 MB/sec.

Also, the speed depends on the type of files you are copying. If you are copying one large file, it is often faster than lots of small files.

Try testing your drive with this Download Nero DiscSpeed 7.0.2.100 Free - A CD-ROM benchmark which can test the most important features of a CD-ROM drive - Softpedia and see what kind of results you get

 

[Persons Can Wai]

Sorry for such a long reply back. I haven't been burning many discs and I don't visit here often so I kinda forgot to do the test.

I didn't run the full test since it was taking long, but I do the transfer rate and access tests. I can run the full thing if you want me too. The transfer test was however: [SIZE=-1]Start [/SIZE][SIZE=-1]6.87x [/SIZE][SIZE=-1]End [/SIZE][SIZE=-1]16.30x [/SIZE][SIZE=-1]Average [/SIZE][SIZE=-1]12.20x [/SIZE][SIZE=-1]Type[/SIZE][SIZE=-1]CAV. [/SIZE]I let that go for a couple minutes and it kept getting higher and higher but it was mostly not moving a ton so I canceled it. The random seek time was 121ms too.

However the same disc is STUPID SLOW in Explorer, like just browing them and doing simple tasks like right clicking files.

Edit: I just cleaned off the same disc used for testing and it mysteriously started running faster in Explorer. However I keep my discs in near mint condition so no idea what I could have cleaned off. Bizarre. That would explain why it was maybe working slow, but it doesn't account for the other discs. It also doesn't account for brand new discs are taken out of the DVD stack/spindle thingy that are clean as well.

 

[Tekno Venus]

It could be possible you have a bad spindle of disks. If possible, see if you can buy a single blank DVD to test. Also try and see if you can enable dma on your DVD drive if it isn't already. Turn Direct Memory Access (DMA) on or off

 

[Persons Can Wai]

I'm gonna run some more tests and report back WAY in the future. DMA was on and I don't want to waste any discs doing tests now, but thanks for possible leads guys!

 

[Tekno Venus]

OK, if you get it sorted post back so other users can help.

If you have any more issues, you know where to turn to!

 

[fedupwithjunk]

I found that the following enables you to copy / delete files with far less bother - thing get going instantaneously

Control panel
Programs
Turn Windows features On or Off
Remove the tick form Remote Differential compression
HTH

 

[Tekno Venus]

To be honest, I'm out of ideas. Hopefully someone else might have a smart idea.

 

[Persons Can Wai]

Thanks for a new lead! I just turned RDC off but have to go to bed now, so can't tell you if it's sped up anything. I will report back. I had no idea that Windows feature enable/disable thing existed either! I have my control panel set up like Windows XP (no categories) but maybe I need to try the "new" (to me) category setup sometime.

I've come to the conclusion that it's either super slow by design (since it's a free built in OS tool and maybe they wanted to use their resources in other areas so they neglected the disc writer), perhaps it's really going much faster than it reports, or maybe it's just some phantom problem that I'll never get to the bottom of. In the end, I can still read and write discs fine, they are just a bit slow (like 1.74-3.31mb file copy speed).

I am also looking into Imgburn or BurnAware free to make my discs but I'm not sure how that will work. If I do multisessions with one program and interchange with Windows to copy/delete new files will all be ok? You don't need to answer this but I know with BurnAware that is NOT the case. It was acting screwy and I just scrapped the test disc I used for that.

 

[Persons Can Wai]

Well, I turned off the RDC, did the restart, and right now I am burning a disc and saw it reach 8.09mb/s. However once I saw that, i't liked jinxed it... the speed has been steadily dropping ever since. It tried to hold out at 7.36mb/s but then it dropped about it's 1mb less, tried to hold out there too, but then kept dropping. The remaining speed was 5.80mb/s steady.

I've come to a conclusion, if can call it that. RDC slows the drive down some, but the real problem is stemming from Windows own disc writer being poorly designed (like I had suggested above). When I send files to a disc, the drive spins up, where it's making lots of noise and such, so you can tell that it's working. However after a very short time (no idea how but less than a minute), the drive goes DEAD SILENT. I'm copying files to a disc now and if you completely covered up the blinking light and asked anybody, without opening the drive, if they thought the drive was in use, they would say no. Even the disc doesn't sound have that tiny clicking noise that you get when you browse them somtimes. This has be a Windows disc burner issue. It is the only thing controlling the drive and Nero DiscSpeed already showed us that I can reach a much higher speed if desired - so it can't be the physical disk drive itself or slow/faulty discs. I think by design it aims for noise over speed, hence the slowdown to prevent noise.

 

[unifex]

Well, I have not used packet writing for a long time now and I do have Windows native burning features turned off. But, my past experiences are the following. I used to use the program that was DirectCD, then Drag to Disk or something like that, by Roxio (which originally was some other name, I forgot that already). It used to work well, I was happy to keep my files on CDs and then DVDs and simply use Explorer to drag and drop files there. But, with "more advanced" Windows, more advanced hardware, problems started appearing. Some disks would suddenly go unreadable. Writing and reading speeds would fluctuate and often stay very low. I searched the internet and found that the whole packet writing thing is actually rather unstable. In fact, my positive experience (until I ran into problems) was rather an exception.

Now, how to get out of this situation? The question is, what are you using this packet writing for?

If you simply use your DVDs for storing data, then it's probably easier and safer (for the data) to burn then in a standard way to a DVD-R. The disks will not be re-writable, but the data will be safe enough.

If you do need to update your files there once in a while, and you don't want to have too many DVDs around, I suggest looking into external hard drives. These can be very inexpensive, they certainly have more storage space then DVDs, and there is never a problem such as what you describe. The speeds vary, but if you use eSATA connection - or nowadays USB3, then the speeds are the same as between different internal drives.

If you use the disks for carrying data around and change files on them daily, then a flash drive or an SD card may be a better solution - again, there is more space and no explorer problems. Moreover, if you want to transfer files to some other computer, then USB flash drive might be the best alternative, since almost any machine will have a USB port.

So you see, at the end of the day I solved the problem with slow packet writing by simply abandoning it. I now use more modern ways to store and move my files. In fact, even my car now has a couple of SD slot, so instead of a bunch of CDs I just have lots of music on a SD card. The price of SD cards is not too high. USB flash drives are cheap - or you can even get then free in many places.

Thus, unless you have a strong reason, why you absolutely must use packet writing, I suggest trying new ways.

 

[Persons Can Wai]

Well I still have 40 something backup discs left. The only reason I use packet writing is cause I want to make use of ALL the data on my discs. If I can't fill a session now, I can come back later and do it. These are only archival discs too.

I had a weird thing happen just like 20m minutes ago too. I was burning a disc, RDC off, restart, registry clean,e tc, and it approached 10mb/s. It stayed from 8.67-9.94mb/s(max avg). Tried again with RDC off and it as like a meg to 2 SLOWER. So yeah, that affects it more than I thought. I would have got an external, but those cost a lot more. I thought this would be a better solution. Guess not.

Turned it back on, then dropped to a pathetic 3 mb/s. Turned it back off, but now it's not jumping back up to speed at all. This is just crap, but I'll have to live with it.