backup to DVD-RAM: SLO-O-O-W

[VJ]

Hello,

I'm now using DVD-RAMs for temporary backup (photos I'm working on, ...).

They are formatted in FAT32 (Windows XP). When I drag-n-drop files from my harddisk to the DVD-RAM, they are copied, but very slowly. The DVD's are 3x, but it goes much slower than that.
I suspect it has to do with the way Windows copies the files (copying many files to a USB storage also goes slowly).

Any thoughts on how to speed up this file-copy mechanism?


Jörg

[High_Jumbllama]

How many files? Typical size range?

[VJ]

To the DVD-RAM: about 4.2 GB worth of 12 MB files... (so approx. 350 files)



Jörg

[VJ]

Any thoughts?
The drive supports 5x, but the dvd only 3x; so I'm expecting around 4 MB/s.
Using xcopy in a cmd window seems to improve on the drag-drop, but it still seems too slow...

Jörg

[Dr Mordrid]

Just for the record, how is the burner connected? Also, is DMA set in Device Manager?

[VJ]

Just for the record, how is the burner connected? Also, is DMA set in Device Manager?

It is an external USB drive. Read transfer rates are much faster.

Jorg

[Dr Mordrid]

Reads will always be faster than writes. As for USB writes being very slow, thats NO suprise.

My son had a USB DVD-everything burner he wanted to use for DVD copying & backups with his Dell Latitude, but it was so slow at burns and DVD-RAM writes he switched to an internal Panasonic DVD -R/+R/RAM burner;

http://www.panasonic.com/industrial/computer/storage/optical/models/UJ846B.htm

Problem solved.

IMO USB is great for interface devices & non-video/low bandwidth HDD use, but otherwise....

[VJ]

That wouldn't explain why writing ordinary DVDs goes at acceptable speeds, nor why copying large files to the DVD RAM goes much faster.

I think the problem is more general: when you copy a large number of files to a removable medium (DVD RAM, USB stick, ...), it goes much slower than copying a single large file to the same medium.
I suspect that for the DVD RAM, this is the killer (I hear the laser-pickup move between every file). A copy tool that would allow one to copy multiple files in one stream would probabely solve my problem.

Windows has the 'enable recording on this drive'-feature, which copies dragged-dropped files to a temporary folder and then burns this at once when the user tells it to. Is there perhaps something similar for DVD RAMs? Would I be better of using UDF instead of FAT32?

Jörg

[Dr Mordrid]

I use my DVD-RAM's & WinXP right out of the box & it sounds faster than your results

Drives: Panasonic, LG & Lite-On

Media: Panasonic

[VJ]

Also in FAT32 ?

[Dr Mordrid]

As formatted out of the boX.

One thing you might consider is that many DVD-RAM drives come with write verification turned on by default, which halves the write speed. Some burners (and firmware builds) allow this to be turned off & some don't.

[VJ]

If I'm not mistaken, out of the box it uses UDF format...

I resorted to FAT32 because I didn't have a UDF writer driver for XP. Perhaps I should check my Nero stuff again (I haven't installed inCD at the moment, perhaps that will add UDF write support for the DVD RAM as well). Do you have other/better suggestions for a driver?

True on the verification, but my speeds are even way lower than half. Only large files (50 MB or so) are written at quite acceptable speeds. I really think it is the file system messing it up.


Jörg

[Fat Tone]

This doesn't get to the root of the problem, but as it sounds like you are writing all your files as once I suppose you could zip them into one archive.

Also a friend of mine was complaiing of excessively slow writing to a USB2 HDD. He found a free 3rd-party driver (sorry, can't remember the name atm) that sped it up enormously.

The authors name was something like 'bright young things'...

[VJ]

This doesn't get to the root of the problem, but as it sounds like you are writing all your files as once I suppose you could zip them into one archive.

I want to be able to replace them independantly later on...

So while it won't get to the root, it might speed things up somewhat...

Also a friend of mine was complaiing of excessively slow writing to a USB2 HDD. He found a free 3rd-party driver (sorry, can't remember the name atm) that sped it up enormously.

Well, I have discovered a similar problem when writing to a USB2 memory, but that is less of an issue (I don't keep data on it long, and don't mind zipping it).


Jörg

[VJ]

Well, I tried InCD, but the version I have doesn't seem to support dvdram.
With dvd burning software it takes 15-20 minutes to write a dvdram, so the slow performance is not USB related.

Doc, what software/udf driver are you using?

Jörg