Can one burn more than one disk at a time

[Dogman]

Mods it would be nice to have a computer section here!!

Before I was banned from Gim I was fighting this, and I think they added one
just for spite after the banning..


Dum or not question


Has anyone tryed to burn two disks at the same time,??

I have an old mad dog external drive that is perfectet, and my laptop drive,

Doing major movie torrent downloads to go to disk, I am asking before trying to burn 2 disks at a time , is it possable>?

Edit: dume question will try shortly, and will delete thread after.
the answer is you will know when you try. Hehe

[Ares]

You can if your CD/DVD burners are SATA.

If they are IDE forget about it.

[Dogman]

You can if you CD/DVD burners are SATA.

If they are IDE forget about it.


Laptop is sata, the mad dog is usb am going to try later, for a grin to see if it can be done.

[SLV^GLD]

Using an IDE burner and a USB burner I have, just for the fun of it, successfully burned 2 discs simultaneously. I ran 2 separate burning programs and sourced the data from 2 separate hard disks to keep the memory addresses and the IDE controllers from puking on it.

[steyr_m]

Mods it would be nice to have a computer section here!!

Before I was banned from Gim I was fighting this, and I think they added one
just for spite after the banning..

Dum or not question

Has anyone tryed to burn two disks at the same time,??

I have an old mad dog external drive that is perfectet, and my laptop drive,

Doing major movie torrent downloads to go to disk, I am asking before trying to burn 2 disks at a time , is it possable>?

Edit: dume question will try shortly, and will delete thread after.
the answer is you will know when you try. Hehe


You can burn two at once if it's SATA (as already mentioned) or SCSI.

I tried to advocate for a computer section on GIM too, but it went no-where. I was looking at anti-virus, security, encryption, etc. only though. I wouldn't mind if it was expanded. What does everyone think?

[JFN111]

I think a computer section would be a great idea.

[SLV^GLD]

Another forum I frequent has a subforum titled "Science and Technology" where computer discussion is contained along with topics related to math, science and emerging technology. In this way the forum isn't just an online helpdesk.

[gunDriller]

yes, you can use a PC as a base for a burning workstation that will burn 2 or more than 2.

SATA drives are pretty mainstream.

if you're on a budget (or want to save money for PMs), the Athlon2 "Propus" is an AMD quad-core that can serve the I/O needs of multiple burners.

it's still tricky though.

[Ash_Williams]

I've done it with CD's to see if I could.
The limiting factor was my hard drive wasn't that fast. I started the first burn and when I started the second they both went very slow. It wasn't worth it and I didn't save any time. That was years ago though, maybe with today's faster HDs you could see some benefit.

[steyr_m]

yes, you can use a PC as a base for a burning workstation that will burn 2 or more than 2.

SATA drives are pretty mainstream.

if you're on a budget (or want to save money for PMs), the Athlon2 "Propus" is an AMD quad-core that can serve the I/O needs of multiple burners.

it's still tricky though.


CPU is not that critical, especially one with 4 cores. I burned 2 CD's quite often simultaneously a few years back on a system with a AMD K6-2 400 Mhz. The reason why I was able to do it was because of the SCSI-2 sub-system. Plus, those 4 cores suck-up lots of power when you're just sitting there burning CD's and browsing GSUS.

[Spectrism]

I know I can burn at least two at one time.

http://300zx.tombeauchamp.com/graphics/z_pics/06_04_1-15_rear_susp_overhaul/IMG_0423.JPG

[Gaillo]

You can if your CD/DVD burners are SATA.

If they are IDE forget about it.


This is not entirely true.
I burn multiple DVD's all the time (2 at a time) with IDE drives using Nero 5 on a Windows 98 machine with a 1.6GHZ AMD processor. I've never had a problem with this (relatively primitive) setup, the buffers all stay full during the burn, and the disks all turn out perfect. I've never tried it with Windows XP or 7 (I'll NEVER TOUCH Vista)... so I don't know if it's possible with more recent OS's or not... but I don't see why it shouldn't be - other than maybe slowdowns due to software bloat.

[gunDriller]

yes, you can use a PC as a base for a burning workstation that will burn 2 or more than 2.

SATA drives are pretty mainstream.

if you're on a budget (or want to save money for PMs), the Athlon2 "Propus" is an AMD quad-core that can serve the I/O needs of multiple burners.

it's still tricky though.


CPU is not that critical, especially one with 4 cores. I burned 2 CD's quite often simultaneously a few years back on a system with a AMD K6-2 400 Mhz. The reason why I was able to do it was because of the SCSI-2 sub-system. Plus, those 4 cores suck-up lots of power when you're just sitting there burning CD's and browsing GSUS.



my personal experience - burning DVD's is much different from burning CD's.

DVD's seem to consume more computer horsepower when you're burning them.

http://forums.anandtech.com/forumdisplay.php?f=9

Anandtech forums computer help, a bunch of geeks (thousands of geeks) to just waiting to shower G-S.us'ers with Geek Love. some of the guys there run major DVD burning workstations.

i used to devote hours to mastering such skills but now i don't really care. i give a computer task 15 minutes or a half hour. if i can make it work, great. if i can't, no worries, i can live without it.

that's the way it's been with DVD's for me. i know a lot of other people are burning them successfully ... obviously.

so, actually, i guess i'm not capable in this department. BUT it can be done and the Anandtech'ers are one resource.

[steyr_m]

I burn multiple DVD's all the time (2 at a time) with IDE drives using Nero 5 on a Windows 98 machine with a 1.6GHZ AMD processor.


I thought I had some old software kicking around. I just this year ditched win2k and installed XP for the first time. Of course, Windows is not my primary OS. I use it for the odd game I play every now and then...

[Ares]

This is not entirely true.
I burn multiple DVD's all the time (2 at a time) with IDE drives using Nero 5 on a Windows 98 machine with a 1.6GHZ AMD processor.

But are the IDE drives on the same controller? :)

What I mean is are you using the same IDE ribbon to connect both IDE drives? I was always told that it was "impossible" to use a single IDE controller to burn to CD's at the same time.

[Gaillo]

This is not entirely true.
I burn multiple DVD's all the time (2 at a time) with IDE drives using Nero 5 on a Windows 98 machine with a 1.6GHZ AMD processor.

But are the IDE drives on the same controller? :)

What I mean is are you using the same IDE ribbon to connect both IDE drives? I was always told that it was "impossible" to use a single IDE controller to burn to CD's at the same time.


I have one ribbon going to a pair of hard drives (a 120GB and a 320GB Western Digital) and the other ribbon going to a pair of DVD-R/W drives. One DVD burner drive is a Panasonic, the other is a Pioneer. Apparently what you were told is not entirely correct. The bus seems to have no problem at all keeping up with both burners writing 2 copies of the same DVD at the same time. I have never tried to burn 2 different DVD images at the same time, though... maybe that's where it would fail? I don't know.

I did have to format the 320GB drive as 3 separate drive letters (due to Windows 98's 137GB drive size limitation) but the 120GB drive (my C: drive) is a single contiguous chunk.

[Cebu_4_2]

I did have to format the 320GB drive as 3 separate drive letters (due to Windows 98's 137GB drive size limitation) but the 120GB drive (my C: drive) is a single contiguous chunk.


There is a way around this as I did it myself but for the life of me I can't remember the trick now. Too much cooking all day combined with a healthy dose of Tryptophan and beer. Maybe if I remember this thread tomorrow I can chime back in here.

[LuckyStrike]

on a Windows 98 machine


http://myfacewhen.com/202/

http://myfacewhen.com/202/


Why the hell can't I embed that pic?

[SLV^GLD]

ATA/100 is a theoretical 100MB/s. Burning at 50X should only require a theoretical 7.5MB/s. Doubled that's 15MB/s. So, in a theoretical sense, a single ATA/100 IDE bus should have no issues burning 2 CDRs at 50X speeds simultaneously. There should be plenty of bandwidth remaining for overhead.

Theory tends to fall to pieces when the bits hit the interface though. Drive to controller configuration would make or break the operation, I would think.