Sata dvd rom speed problem

[Paul Elliott]

MB MSI PM8M-V Pentium 4
hard drive Seagate 160gb SATA
DVD rom SATA PCMart ( Lite-On ) SA22518X
DVD burner IDE Lite-On LH20A1P

I recently purchased a Lite-On DVD rom drive from TigerDirect and
when it arrived noticed that it was an OEM model ( no cables &
no documentation ). Normally I'm fine with this if everything works.
At least it was not costly.

while running speed tests, I noticed that the DVD rom was only
running at 2x but the same disc on the burner would run
at 11x. I've used 2 different utilites to test the speed and both
come up with roughly the same numbers. The burst speed for the
DVD rom is 3MB/s and for the burner is 42MB/s. The only obvious
thing I notice different is the rom test is labeled CLV and the burner
is labeled CAV.

Could part of the problem be that the SATA on the MB is SATA 1
from around 2006?

I've tried using the Lite-On firmware updating utility but it won't
recognize the rom drive. The PCMart US site doesn't show the
drive.

Is there something I can do to speed up the drive or should I just
live with it?

Thanks.

 

[gtvr]

SATA 1 is 1.5Gb (1500Mb) per second, so either 3 or 42MB (24 or 336Mb) is easily handled by the bus. Not sure why your drive is slow, but it's probably not the bus.

 

[Paul Elliott]

Well, as no one else has any opinions/suggestions to share, I'm sorta
gonna give up on getting better out of the cd/dvd rom drive. No response
from PCMart. And when I asked a question about it on TigerDirect they
removed the question. And when I tried to give a review that gave some
of these details theywouldn't let me post it.

some things I did find out:
1) the mb seems to have a problem with the 2nd sata connection or maybe
a problem with a sata hd on connection #1, a cd/dvd rom on connection #2,
and a cd/dvd burner on the ide connection. recognizes it at ata/100
instead of ata/133. under Windows 2000, I was unable to get it set to
DMA instead of PIO. couldn't find a way to force DMA.

2) removing the dvd rom drive and plugging in a Lite-On iHAS124-04 dvd
burner. still recognized at ata/100 and PIO. did get slightly better numbers
than the dvd rom but still way slower than the ide burner.

3) moved the PCMart dvd rom to another computer with
ASUS M2n68-AM Plus running Ubuntu. got roughly the same speed as
on the original computer. couldn't find a Linux version of Nero cd-speed
and the Window's version couldn't find a cd/dvd rom running under Wine.

Oh well. On to other fun and games.

 

[Paul Elliott]

I called the maker's support line long distance ( since the email support
people denied having that model number ). They had to go and see if
the model number was legit.
Their suggestion was to blow some air into it as the lens is probably dirty or
run some lens cleaning disc.

I don't see how that would alter how the BIOS sees the drive at boot up.

I guess I'll only be using that drive if absolutely necessary.
No more Lite-On drives for me.