Digital BW, The Print

Hi Steadman,

The cause of buffer under-runs is quite simple; the info is not being sent
from your hard disk to the CD fast enough, so that the CD-writer memory
buffer runs out of info.

The solutions are various: buying a CD writer with a bigger memory buffer,
using a faster hard disk, using a slower write speed, etc, etc,

Windows XP tries to avoid these problems by always copying the files to be
burnt to a new directory, and then copying them from this new directory to
the CD. This helps to avoid the problems with the hard-disk head moving all
over the place locating the files and their fragments for copying.

If you have two hard disks, copy all the files to the non-system disk before
burning them from that location. The hard-disk heads on that disk can then
devote all their attention to reading the unfragmented files to be burnt,
without having to update windows swap files etc.

Some burning software claims to prevent buffer underruns, perhaps by caching
larger chunks of the info before starting the burn, or other means.

I solved the problem on my CD writer by simply reducing the write speed from
it's max of 10x to 4x. This seems to be the simplest solution; it's free and
simply means you drink a whole cup of coffee while it burns instead of half
a cup!

Bob Frost.


----- Original Message -----
From: "Steadman Uhlich" <steadmanuhlich@...>
>
> I selected about 600mb of data image files and clicked burn....and waited
and watched as the burn software showed progress to about 93% or so and then
the CD would report "ERRORS REPORTED."
>
> The error?  "Buffer Underrun."
>
> This is the first time I have encountered this problem.  It created
Coasters as the  images would not open in Photoshop.   I have not had this
problem before (I used to use Kodak and Maxell CDs).   What gets me is that
I went through this several times (wasted time each time) waiting to backup
the disc so I could use my CF card.   The delay was "costly" in this case. I
want to avoid that.