Hey fellas I have this problem with nero that I had a while back and can't seem to figure out how I fixed it before. I have not burned a DVD on nero for about a month or so, I started yesterday and Now I have this problem that it takes 20 minutes to burn a DVD that normally took 6 to 8 minutes. As far as I can see no changes have been done to any of the options or preferences and I have enough space on the C drive or E drive (where I store my ISO files). I have a picture to show you what I mean but don't know how to put it on here. I will try to explain as best as I can. When burning a DVD there are 2 lines that fill up, one is the buffer read and the other is the % of data burned on the DVD. The buffer read usually stays between 95 and 100% but now it goes up and down all the time. There is also another smaller line under them that shows the buffer level. That usually stays between 90 and 100 % now it also goes all the way down to 5% and back up over and over making the burn take almost 3 times as long as usual. I tried shutting down unnecesary software and even made sure there was enough space on all drives. Tried defrag and clean up and nothing seemms to work. So far the DVDs have burned fine but they just take too long. I have an AMD Sempron at 1.6 GHz, 512 memory, 200 GB hard drive, windows 2000, nero 6.0.8.8, Lite-On 16X Dual Layer DVD-RW+RW almost brand new. I use Memorex 8x DVD-R and it has always worked well for me. I had this problem before and can't remember what I did to fix it or if I fixed it myself at all. Thanx in advance for any help.
Read this thread about buffer problems http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/214701 Also you may want to think about changing your media, Memorex is not exactly quality. You can get Verbatim, Sony, Fuji or Maxells for the same amount of money. You might want to check and see that your burners firmware is up to date. The time you are saying for your burn is pretty standard, a 4x burn will take about 14 to 15 minutes. Obviously you want to burn at 8x which can cause errors in playback.
I have tried Maxell and works pretty good. I will consider trying something new. I will check the firmware today, not sure why I didn't do that before. I burn my movies at 8x and I do agree once in a while they are not too good, I will go for the 4x. But first I need to fix this problem or it will be 40 minutes rather than 15 if it keeps up. Thanx. And thanx for the link as well.
You also might want to ensure that DMA is still on, just in case. http://home.comcast.net/~bbmayo/checking DMA.pdf
Thanx again. It turned out that I needed to update the firmware on the drive. Once I did, worked like a charm. Thanx.