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Re: [LUG] Seedy Writers



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On Sunday 22 December 2002 8:51 pm, Tom Glare wrote:
Have just tried using one of these devices for the first time, and it
appears to be first time lucky, as the resulting CD seems to be just
fine. But there are a couple of things that perhaps the expert

As it should be!

"burners" out there may be able to answer. First, speed : I thought I had
a drive that would write at twelve times something, though I'm not sure
what that something is, and come to that I wouldn't put my shirt on the
twelve either, as the device didn't come with a manual. Anway,
"speed=12"  was specified, and among the abundance of information that
"cdrecord" spat out, was the following ..


The various speeds are normally part of the name of the drive:
Identifikation : 'LTR-40125S      '
40 speed write, 12 speed re-write. So this drive will write a CD-R (write
once, read many times disc) at 40 speed. This equates to 40 times faster than
the disc would be read by a standard music CD player. A CD-RW disc requires a
lower writing speed, so those more expensive write many, read many discs can
be written at 12speed. (I've only got older CD-RW discs with a max of 2speed
though so haven't tested that.)

As a normal music CD is upto an hour of music, 2speed will take 30 minutes to
write the data (not including the lead in and lead out times) and a 20x speed
will take 3 minutes. My 40x generally gives a write time of ~90-120 seconds
for the complete write, including lead in and lead out. (These are the points
when the laser is writing blank data that signifies the end and beginning of
tracks (I think.))

Try using cdrecord -prcap
It makes a (longer) more intelligible output:

[neil@xxxxxxxx neil]$ cdrecord -prcap
Cdrecord 1.10 (i586-mandrake-linux-gnu) Copyright (C) 1995-2001 Jörg Schilling
scsidev: '0,0,0'
scsibus: 0 target: 0 lun: 0
Linux sg driver version: 3.1.20
Using libscg version 'schily-0.5'
Device type    : Removable CD-ROM
Version        : 0
Response Format: 2
Capabilities   :
Vendor_info    : 'LITE-ON '
Identifikation : 'LTR-40125S      '
Revision       : 'ZS0N'
Device seems to be: Generic mmc CD-RW.

Drive capabilities, per page 2A:

 Does read CD-R media
 Does write CD-R media
 Does read CD-RW media
 Does write CD-RW media
 Does not read DVD-ROM media
 Does not read DVD-R media
 Does not write DVD-R media
 Does not read DVD-RAM media
 Does not write DVD-RAM media
 Does support test writing
<snip>

Here's the stuff you wanted:

 Maximum read  speed in kB/s: 1408
 Current read  speed in kB/s: 1408
 Maximum write speed in kB/s: 7040
 Current write speed in kB/s: 7040
 Buffer size in KB: 2048

Not sure how those calculations work out, perhaps the read speed is actually
the erasable speed?

Identification : LTR-12101B
Revision       : LUS3
  .
  .
ATIP info from disk :
   Indicated writing power : 5
   Reference speed : 2
   Is not unrestricted
   Is erasable

This could be part of the reason why cdrecord is putting out the extra data -
you are using an erasable disc CD-RW. CD-R's will write faster.

   ATIP start of lead in  -12900 (97:10/00)
   STIP start of lead out 359849 (79:59/74)
   Speed low: 0   speed high : 4
   Power mult factor: 4 5
   Recommended erase/write power: 3

That's the recommended erase/write speed OF THE CD-RW DISC, not the writer.

Your 12speed drive may well be a 12x4 drive, 12speed CD-R, 4speed CD-RW. That
would fit with other, slower, drives I've had previously. The erasable speed
of the drive is often a third of the non-erasable speed. In this case, the
drive wrote the disc at higher than the recommended speed for the disc.

   A2 values : 5C C6 26
  .
  .
(at end of process)
Average write speed 4.0x

So which of these figures, if any, do I have to take notice of, and does
it matter what speed I put in the "cdrecord" line ? The overall cooking

Yes it does matter what speed you put on the command line, but the drive
simply cannot write faster than the maximum for the operation. In this case,
it found an erasable disc and had to write at the slower speed.

time (for 650MB of data) was twenty minutes. Is this about normal ? Am I

20 minutes - that includes lead in and lead out so say 16mins for the data,
that's about 4speed, as reported. Use a CD-R disc (non-erasable) and you
could get to the 12speed and cut that total time to under 7 minutes.

right in thinking that if I use one of those "once burnt, twice shy" disks
it would be quicker ?

A lot. In this case, three times faster.


Finally, is the following information (which again was part of the
"cdrecord" output)  recognizable to anyone ...

"Manufacturer : unknown (not in table)
Manufacturer is unknown because of the orange forum embargo. As the orange
forum likes to get money for recent information, it may be that this media
does not use illegal manufacturer coding."

Well, absolutely. Good thing too. Erm, what exactly is the orange forum
embargo, Sir Humphrey ?

That's to do with the discs. Whose discs are you using? (They sound
expensive! Try getting a plain stack of unlabelled ones from PCWorld or
similar, far cheaper and with newer drives and burn protection, I haven't
wasted any so far. The old TraxData and Kodak discs were AWFUL!)

- --

Neil Williams
=============
http://www.codehelp.co.uk
neil@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
linux@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
neil@xxxxxxxxxxxx


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