CD Burning Problem

[.dsaavedra.]

i'm trying to back up some of my music onto CD's, and i'm having some trouble burning.

i used my Zune software to burn once CD, and it took about 15 minutes. i don't burn CD's too often but it sure seemed like it was going VERY slow. this CD was successfully burned though.

then i tried burning a different CD using Sonic software to burn the CD, and it was displaying a burn rate of 0.7x. and estimated time of over an hour. it took over 5 minutes to burn one song so i cancelled that and wasted a CD.

then i tried to burn the same CD using Windows Media Player, and it zipped thru the inspection/conversion, and then when it started to burn the first song, i got a message saying that the CD could not be burned.

so, how long should it take to burn a CD and what is some good software to do it with?

[skunked_again]

i use windows media player and the time of the burn depends on your set up. if you tried to burn something on that disk before the disk might no longer be taking more files. id try a new disk.

[dallas0996]

For free, Itunes does a pretty good job; and it's a decent player too.

[.dsaavedra.]

i use windows media player and the time of the burn depends on your set up. if you tried to burn something on that disk before the disk might no longer be taking more files. id try a new disk.

its a brand new CD-R. just bought the pack today.

my CD drive is a "HL-DT-ST DVDRRW GSA-H21L" not sure what all that means, maybe i'll put it into google.

[FishingPirate]

itunes here too. Sure youre not using CD's you put in that microwave  

[Dan:]

What was wrong with using the Zune software? I think 15 minutes sounds about right but I guess it depends on the computer.

If you are just backing up the music, you should burn the files as data, not as music. Then you can fit a lot more on each CD.

[.dsaavedra.]

What was wrong with using the Zune software? I think 15 minutes sounds about right but I guess it depends on the computer.

If you are just backing up the music, you should burn the files as data, not as music. Then you can fit a lot more on each CD.

i burned the same album that was giving me trouble on my dad's computer using Nero Express and it did it in 3 min 31 seconds.

i think something is wrong with the CD drive on this desktop computer. we'll have to check it out.

as for backing them up, i'm not burning them just to back them up, i also want to be able to listen to them in the car or in my room or whatever.

[daviscw]

What was wrong with using the Zune software? I think 15 minutes sounds about right but I guess it depends on the computer.

If you are just backing up the music, you should burn the files as data, not as music. Then you can fit a lot more on each CD.

i burned the same album that was giving me trouble on my dad's computer using Nero Express and it did it in 3 min 31 seconds.

i think something is wrong with the CD drive on this desktop computer. we'll have to check it out.

as for backing them up, i'm not burning them just to back them up, i also want to be able to listen to them in the car or in my room or whatever.

You still listen to CD's? Really Dave??

[daviscw]

BTW, a 4GB flash drive is like $20 or maybe less. That's the way to go these days as far as backing up your music. My next choice would be an external hard drive.

[baboosicbass08]

Itunes seems to be the fastest for me

[Dan:]

What was wrong with using the Zune software? I think 15 minutes sounds about right but I guess it depends on the computer.

If you are just backing up the music, you should burn the files as data, not as music. Then you can fit a lot more on each CD.

i burned the same album that was giving me trouble on my dad's computer using Nero Express and it did it in 3 min 31 seconds.

Is his computer newer/better?

i think something is wrong with the CD drive on this desktop computer. we'll have to check it out.

That could very well be.

as for backing them up, i'm not burning them just to back them up, i also want to be able to listen to them in the car or in my room or whatever.

Gotcha. I figured that might be the case.

[GLADES]

Nero is the fastest I have used.

[Eddie Munster]

As Dan pointed out, your dad's comp might have a better burner, processor, memory (RAM) and a better hard drive with a bigger cache.

Try looking around in Zune for Options/Settings and changing the speed of the burner to max. Some software throttles it down to ensure quality. Also, Zune might be verifying the files which really isn't necessary these days due to CD-Rs being so cheap. Basically, try looking around for some settings within the software you're using and maximizing that.

I use Nero and when I back up music I rip it to the hard drive first then burn it.

[CFFF 1.5]

the burn speed is dependent on the max write speed of your drive and also how fast your computer can buffer what is going to be written. I have a one year old laptop with a max burn speed of 52x and almost never reaches 52x but can burn a full cd in less than 5 minutes. I don't know if you have Big Lots up there but they have 4gb memory sticks for $10 right now. Also 4gb sd cards for $10. When burning a cd make sure all other programs are shut down before trying to burn. Also in my opinion sonic is a terrible burning program it is absolutely horrible at estimating time remaining. 90% of the time my cd/dvd's are done burning when the progress bar only shows like 60 - 75%. Use nero if you can.

[Bankbeater]

Copy the songs to your harddrive first and then burn them to a CD. Sometimes the original CD has software embedded in it that will not let it be copied to a blank CD.

[.dsaavedra.]

yes i still listen to CD's, and even buy some, not much though (usually i listen to my zune on the docking station and get music from friends)

my dad's laptop is a year or two newer than this computer, but i don't know any of the specs on his computer. i do know that it takes 4.5 years to boot up though :

there is a big lots somewhere around here, i should go and check out the sale on flash drives. i really need a new one. i have a card reader right now and the biggest card i have is 1gb. i should go get a 4gb card.

but i wouldn't back my music up on a flash drive because 1.) i have much more music than will fit on a flash drive 2.) i trade my flash drive w/ my friends to get music and 3.) i'm not backing up  a lot of music, i just want some to listen to on CD's.

CFF, i'm gonna go look in zune right now to see if there are any settings i can change.

bankbeater, all this music is already on my hard disk.

[.dsaavedra.]

i just checked and zune is set to the fastest burn speed.

i really think the problem is with this computer's disk drive because it also takes equally as long for me to rip CD's.

[CGH]

Their is nothing wrong with your HARDWARE, its your software

When you burn Cd's from MP3's or from any other format that is not NATIVE to music cdrom's, the media (song) has to be converted back into native format then burned.

Nero does this conversion on the fly,  some of the version of Windows Media player will also do it on the fly...  But some of the older version of WMP (Windows Media player) will convert only the first song (some times the first three songs) then burn it (them) to cd and closed the cd to future burning then report that no more info can be added to the cd.

[.dsaavedra.]

we fixed it.

the problem is that the drive was programed to burn/rip in PIO, which requires the CPU, and the burning was using 100% of the CPU's power.

in order for the rip/burn to work smoothly, it has to be running in DMA mode, which doesn't require the CPU, but gets it's input from the drive itself.

so we had to uninstall the drive and then reinstall it, and when it reinstalled it was back to DMA mode.

we think that severe (i mean severe) dust caused errors of several reads, so something programmed the drive to run in PIO mode, which is a slower but "safer" mode. so we just blew the dust out and reinstalled the drive to get it running in DMA mode again, and it rips/burns fine.