This is doing my :swear: head in .. I have 192mb ram, 40 gig hard drive and running a sempron 2200 at around 1.5ghz on Windows XP. I have the DVDRW-IDE1008 dvd burner (rpc1 firmware version 60). For a long time i've been having no real problems with this drive and have been burning away happily. It took me around 30 minutes to back up a film at 2x, but once I flashed the firmware to the latest version - 60 - and started using +R's, I could knock a film out in around 10-12 minutes. About 2 weeks ago I bought a pack of 50 mitsubishi black diamond 1-4x +R's and burnt a lot of stuff with no problems - again, around 10-12 minutes per film. In the last few days, for no apparent reason, it's gone from taking around 10 minutes per film to an HOUR to burn !!!. I've changed nothing - using the same discs, same drive, same everything. Not running anything at the same time or anything. I can't figure it out. Since this has started happening i've re-flashed the firmware to the latest version, trimmed down MSCONFIG and killed a few unecessary processes, I've verified my ASPI settings - no problems. I've also run a full virus and spyware/adware check and have no problems. As i'm typing this, i'm downloading the Nero update as this is the only thing I can think of that I haven't done. If anyone can suggest anything or point me in the right direction then i'd be eternally grateful. Thanks.
Unless you inadvertantly changed the write speed, I'm guessing it's probably the drive going. I had an HP cd-rw that before it died began to become picky about media and was taking 10x longer to burn a disc. Same thing may be happening to you.
i did wonder if the drive was on it's way out actually - drive speed is unchanged. i downloaded and installed the nero updates, and it presented me with an option to burn the disc at 2x - previously I'd only been given the option to burn at 4x, so i burnt the same film at 2x that took an hour to burn at 4x and it took 27 minutes. i guess i'll have to make do with that for now and maybe squeeze a few more weeks life out of the old girl
