SATA burning problems.

TikiDad · 02-10-2008, 02:17 PM

I recently built a new rig:
MSI K9A2 Platinum
Athlon 64x2 6400+
2GB DDR800 RAM (g.skill cas5)
320GB IDE HDD
500GB SATA HDD
Samsung SH-203B DVDRW
ATI x1950xtx

I reused some parts from my old PC, namely the video card, DVD Burner and the IDE HDD. Did a clean install of windows, got everything up and running got around to backing some stuff up on DVD and noticed something odd. It was taking far longer to burn a DVD on the new system than it did on the older one (single core athlon 64 @ 2.2ghz). Naturally I was surprised to see a 4.3 GB disc taking 5:50 to burn when the same size disc took a little over 4:15 on a system with much less processor. I tried another burn and made sure the write speed was sset to 16x/max and tried again. "Good," I thought to myself, "Nero says this disc will be done in 3:15" Then I looked at the current write speed...5.7x. It slowly ramped up dipping down briefly then climbing until 5:45 seconds later it finished at about the same time it hit 16x. Now trying to remember how this burner worked in my old machine I'm fairly certain Nero would report 16x shortly after the initial spin up of the disc and stay there throughout the burn...and finish a minute and a half quicker than this system.

As of right now I'm thinking it may be ATI's SATA controller. I looked in the device manager under IDE/ATAPI devices and there is no "Serial ATA Controller" to be found. On the old system which had an NForce ASUS motherboard there was a controller listed and I could view the device on it and all the other SATA ports. Unless I am completely mistaken I remember putting the 500GB SATA HDD in and checking the speed of it. Chances are that was some added functionality from an old install of Sisoft SANDRA, but I vaguely remember checking it and my burner.

As of right now I am leaning towards thinking it's the difference in chipsets that is denying me a view of my SATA devices and their properties. I have upgraded my burners firmware, I've checked ATI/AMD's site for SATA drivers and I've looked on MSI's site for the same. All they have listed is Promise drivers for the RAID and E-SATA and the SB600 SATA RAID drivers. Unless I am mistaken that would essentially mean I was installing RAID drivers when I'm not using any RAID devices. I'm thinking there is an option in the BIOS to use the Promise RAID slots as "IDE" but in order to do that I need to install those drivers from a floppy (conveniently not included tyvm MSI) and then move the cables to the RAID slots, then boot into the BIOS and set those as "Use RAID as IDE"...

Any help or suggestions would be more than welcome and thanks in advance.

02-10-2008, 02:17 PM	#1 (permalink)
TikiDad Registered User Join Date: Feb 2008 Posts: 1 OS: WinXP Pro	SATA burning problems. I recently built a new rig: MSI K9A2 Platinum Athlon 64x2 6400+ 2GB DDR800 RAM (g.skill cas5) 320GB IDE HDD 500GB SATA HDD Samsung SH-203B DVDRW ATI x1950xtx I reused some parts from my old PC, namely the video card, DVD Burner and the IDE HDD. Did a clean install of windows, got everything up and running got around to backing some stuff up on DVD and noticed something odd. It was taking far longer to burn a DVD on the new system than it did on the older one (single core athlon 64 @ 2.2ghz). Naturally I was surprised to see a 4.3 GB disc taking 5:50 to burn when the same size disc took a little over 4:15 on a system with much less processor. I tried another burn and made sure the write speed was sset to 16x/max and tried again. "Good," I thought to myself, "Nero says this disc will be done in 3:15" Then I looked at the current write speed...5.7x. It slowly ramped up dipping down briefly then climbing until 5:45 seconds later it finished at about the same time it hit 16x. Now trying to remember how this burner worked in my old machine I'm fairly certain Nero would report 16x shortly after the initial spin up of the disc and stay there throughout the burn...and finish a minute and a half quicker than this system. As of right now I'm thinking it may be ATI's SATA controller. I looked in the device manager under IDE/ATAPI devices and there is no "Serial ATA Controller" to be found. On the old system which had an NForce ASUS motherboard there was a controller listed and I could view the device on it and all the other SATA ports. Unless I am completely mistaken I remember putting the 500GB SATA HDD in and checking the speed of it. Chances are that was some added functionality from an old install of Sisoft SANDRA, but I vaguely remember checking it and my burner. As of right now I am leaning towards thinking it's the difference in chipsets that is denying me a view of my SATA devices and their properties. I have upgraded my burners firmware, I've checked ATI/AMD's site for SATA drivers and I've looked on MSI's site for the same. All they have listed is Promise drivers for the RAID and E-SATA and the SB600 SATA RAID drivers. Unless I am mistaken that would essentially mean I was installing RAID drivers when I'm not using any RAID devices. I'm thinking there is an option in the BIOS to use the Promise RAID slots as "IDE" but in order to do that I need to install those drivers from a floppy (conveniently not included tyvm MSI) and then move the cables to the RAID slots, then boot into the BIOS and set those as "Use RAID as IDE"... Any help or suggestions would be more than welcome and thanks in advance.