External Drive Questions

[jrswanson]

I just moved my PC off of my desk to get more room and installed an external LaCie d2 DVD writer to rip CDs with. I installed it via firewire and started dBpowerAMP to rip a CD. dBpA recognized the CD and retrieved the AMG data but when I hit rip I get immediate errors on each track that it can't read the CD. I play the CD through foobar and it plays just fine. The only thing I can think to change is the communication parameter (which had defaulted to SCSI pass-through). I change it to ASPI(Nero) and try again. This time dBpA starts to rip track one but only at 7x (the drive says it can rip at 40x.) And, after track 1 is ripped it has to re-rip about 30,000 frames which sounds like the whole track! So I stop this and reconnect via USB and try again. This time it rips and compresses the tracks fine (no re-rips) but again only at 7x. Hmmm. I crawl under my desk and put the CD in the old drive and it zips through it in no time just fine. So the CD is OK. I re-connect via firewire and fire up Nero Drive speed and check out the LaCie drive and everything checks out fine (40X, perfect DAE, etc.) You can even hear the drive spin up much faster than with dBpA. So I rip with Nero and again it zips throught the disc in no time.

Sorry for the long post. My questions are:

What am I doing wrong in dBpA that I can't get optimum performance out of this drive but Nero can?

If this drive isn't compatible with dBpA is there a recommended external drive that will give me fast, secure rips?

Thanks.

[bhoar]

Re: External Drive Questions

Since dbpa stores separate rip settings for each drive it discovers, the source of the problem could be as simple as having different secure or ultrasecure rip settings for the internal and external drives. I would double check all of these, perhaps going as far as taking screen shots of the settings and sub-settings for both drives.

If the settings for both turn out to be the same, then I am at a loss. I expect USB-connected drives to show problems during rips*. However, in my experience, firewire-connected drives should operate as well as, if not better than**, IDE-connected drives.

-brendan

* because unlike SCSI, ATA, ATAPI and Firewire, the USB Mass Storage standard wasn't based on the core structure of the SCSI framework, and therefore the bridge boards end up doing all sorts of translation acrobatics that often fail to work well or at all for all but the core (e.g. read/write/inquiry etc.) commands. I haven't come across a USB chipset that doesn't exhibit some sort of bug with some ripping application on certain discs.

** because firewire-connected drives don't trigger windows' penchant for changing IDE connections from DMA to PIO mode when reads return errors instead of data.

[demoleon]

Re: External Drive Questions

Per your suggestion I double checked the parameters and they all look good. I even changed to burst mode with no effect. I wonder why Nero will rip at speed? Anyway unless someone else has any suggestions this unit is going back to the vendor. Do you suppose I would have this problem with any firewire external drive I might purchase? Maybe the problem is with my computer firewire? I have the latest mobo drivers installed.

Thanks

[LtData]

Re: External Drive Questions

What if you set the Communication to "Windows Internal"? Do you have C2 or FUA enabled?

[demoleon]

Re: External Drive Questions

OK I tried "Windows Internal" and not change. Ripped at about 7x same as ASPI. When in ASPI mode I did have C2 enabled but not FUA.

[LtData]

Re: External Drive Questions

Did you try ripping in ASPI or Windows internal with C2 disabled? Or ripping in the SCSI Pass Through with C2 disabled?

[demoleon]

Re: External Drive Questions

With C2 disabled and in SPT it will rip but still at 7x. In SPT with C2 enabled it will not rip. I get an immediate red "X" error that says the CD is unreadable. I tried SPT and burst. It ripped OK but again at 7x. The drive supposedly has C2 error detection. Like I said before if I use Nero to rip you can really hear the drive spin up and it actually reaches over 40x by the end of the CD. With dBpA you don't hear the drive at all and it stays pegged at 7x throughout the whole CD.

[LtData]

Re: External Drive Questions

Even if the drive support C2, the IDE-to-USB bridge chipset must also support C2, which I believe one user has found to be quite rare. Firewire, though, should work with C2, but again this depends on the IDE-to-Firewire bridge chipset.