ImgBurn limitation with multiple burners

[jackfalbey]

Although I'm still a big fan of the free ImgBurn software, apparently it does have a few flaws when burning with multiple DVD drives simultaneously:

1) This is from the ImgBurn forums: each burner needs its own hard drive for the source ISO. If you try to burn on 2 or more DVD drives from the same hard drive, the burn speed is lowered because of the conflict within the hard drive trying to read different parts of the ISO at the same time.

2) This is the big one that I found out the hard way: even if you have separate hard drives for each DVD burner, the max burn speed will drop to ~1-2x MAX if they're all passing through the South Bridge! I have 4 DVD burners (2 on IDE and 2 on SATA) and 4 hard drives (all on SATA) in my workstation but if I have more than one burn running - even with the ISO copied to different source hard drives - the burn speed drops to 1.1-1.8x. I've tried every combination of source/destination pairings, and no luck. The only solution I've found is if I set one burn from any internal HDD to any of the DVD burners, and then set a second burn from an eSATA HDD through a PCI-SATA card with the destination DVD drive also connected by SATA to the same PCI card. So, if I want to burn at 8x, I can only burn 2 DVDs at a time (unless I get more PCI-SATA cards!)

I don't know if this is a hardware limitation of the South Bridge (mine is ICH7R) or a software limitation of ImgBurn, but it was a major slowdown on a recent 500-disc production run! Does anyone have a recommendation for DVD burning software - free or reasonably priced - that can burn to multiple drives simultaneously and maintain 8x burn speed?

[Chuck Engels]

Maybe duplication software, but the best thing I've seen is a duplication device like our church has.

[jackfalbey]

Yeah, Ithought I was going to be clever and build my own "poor man's" Aleratec. I figured since my case has a ton of 5.25" bays and I had unused connectors on my motherboard, I'd drop 4 DVD burners in there at $20 each and have a $600 duplicator for only $80... oh well, at least I can Lightscribe with all 4 of them at the same time!

[Chuck Engels]

It still burns multiples at a time just very slowly right?

[jackfalbey]

Yes, it'll burn to all 4 at the same time, but if I have the source and destination drives connected through the Southbridge, they all burn at ~1-2x instead of 8x which is what I have ImgBurn set to (all my burners are 20x hardware-capable)so it takes 30 min. to burn 4 3GB ISOs to DVD instead of 5 min. to burn 1. The only workaround I've found is with the PCIe card (which I'm guessing must go through the Northbridge on my motherboard) which lets me burn a second ISO at 8x. What's really funny is if I run more than 1 burner off of the Southbridge, the PCIe burner's speed also drops, but always to 2.1x...

[jackfalbey]

Time to revisit this old thread...

I haven't had the need to run multiple simultaneous burns since I started using Vista 64-bit, until today. I had all 4 DVD burners going at 8.0x to 8.1x, running multiple instances of ImgBurn but using the same source ISO on a single drive! Apparently the problems I had in my posts above were an XP-only (or perhaps 32-bit) issue.

[Chuck Engels]

Good to hear Jack, and good to hear from you also

[George Tyndall]

Time to revisit this old thread...

I haven't had the need to run multiple simultaneous burns since I started using Vista 64-bit, until today. I had all 4 DVD burners going at 8.0x to 8.1x, running multiple instances of ImgBurn but using the same source ISO on a single drive! Apparently the problems I had in my posts above were an XP-only (or perhaps 32-bit) issue.

Jack, I use computers like the one described in my signature (XP 32-bit) for my creations, but the computer that I use to go online is as follows (Win7 64-bit):

http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopp ... id=3674661

In your opinion, does the latter have the "horsepower" to do multiple DVD burns from an external HDD (USB2.0), using ImgBurn?

[jackfalbey]

In your opinion, does the latter have the "horsepower" to do multiple DVD burns from an external HDD (USB2.0), using ImgBurn?

One thing I've noticed is that even with all 4 burners going at 8x, my CPU usage only runs around 25%, give or take. My RAM usage runs around 3.7GB. So, it seems that burning DVDs with ImgBurn isn't very CPU or RAM intensive. Your system should be able to handle it. The only unknown for me is the USB connection. My burners are all internal and are connected via IDE and SATA.

I think (and someone might correct me on this) that USB connections share bandwidth, so if you have multiple USB peripherals running simultaneously you may get slower overall data transfer rates, resulting in slower burn speeds.

and good to hear from you also

Sorry I haven't been as active here lately. I've been keeping an eye on the forums and posting a bit here and there, but since the ad agency I was working for moved to Orlando I've had to go back to restaurant work for supplemental income and therefore spending much less time in front of a computer. That, coupled with the new baby and terrible two-year-old, has kept me busy. I haven't even had time to update my avatar with the new little one yet.