Member Avatar for starfox_2100

Hi All

I burn a lot of DVD’s on my PC. At the monment I have a 1 burner.

I am planning on installing 3 burners altogether. So that I can burn disks at the same time.

Please could you tell me if this is possible.

The spec of my system is:

P4 1.5Ghz
512MB SDRAM PC133
80GB HDD

I am planning on buying 3 NEC 3500A DVD+/-RW Dual Layer 8.5Gb 16x Writer drives

thanks......

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by Catweazle

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Short version: you can physically fit three internal burners, but doing reliable, simultaneous DVD burns on a P4/512MB/one‑HDD box is unlikely to give good results. As pointed out, the real constraint is sustained data throughput on shared ATA buses; ’s duplicator suggestion is the only fail‑safe way to copy many discs at once, and was right to flag a memory upgrade as a useful step.

Practical steps that will improve success if you want to try multiple burners anyway:

  • Create a single mastered image (ISO) of each movie first and place that image on a fast internal drive — burning from an image avoids constant reader seeks.
  • Put each writer on independent controllers where possible (add PCI/SATA controller cards) so they don’t share one IDE channel.
  • Ensure all optical drives and HDDs use DMA (not PIO), update drive firmware, raise system RAM (>=1GB in a Windows XP era machine), close background apps, and burn at conservative speeds (lower speed = far fewer errors).
  • Use good‑quality media and always run verification on sample discs.

Notes on software and testing: some authoring/burning suites offer a “burn to multiple recorders” option — check your version of Nero or the authoring package — but software support won’t overcome a hardware bottleneck. If attempting simultaneous burns, do small test runs and verify each drive’s output (use the burner’s verify function or an error‑scan utility) before committing a large batch.

Recommendation: for occasional home movies, a single high‑quality burner plus the image‑first workflow and a RAM upgrade is the most cost‑effective path. For regular, large runs, use a standalone duplicator or a duplication service rather than relying on a single consumer PC. For : next steps that give the biggest chance of success are make an ISO master, upgrade RAM, and add a separate controller card before buying extra writers.

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Member Avatar for alc6379

You're not ever going to want to burn more than one disc at the same time.

Reason being, the IDE channel is really taxed throwing all of that data back and forth. Without an IDE controller card, your setup would be like this:

  • Primary Master: Hard drive
  • Primary Slave: DVD burner
  • Secondary Master: DVD burner
  • Secondary Slave: DVD burner

If you do that, you're going to end up with a lot of badly burnt discs. If you can even find a program that will allow you to use multiple burners, the IDE channels are going to be so clogged up, it will be a slow, and error-prone process to burn multiple DVDs at once.

As it is, you should pretty much stick to getting drives that are faster, and have higher storage capacity. That's the safest way to ensure that you're not wasting your time and your discs.

Member Avatar for Catweazle

There's only really two reasons I can think of for burning that amount of DVDs.

If you are producing DVDs in commercial quantities for sale, then you be better off using a dedicated machine for the task. DVD copying machines can be purchased which produce multiple copies simultaneously. The more copies produced, the more expensive the machine of course.

http://www.mediacopy.co.uk/cd_duplicators.htm

If you're burning that many DVDs because you're pirating them, then I don't want to help you! But I couldn't even if I wanted to, because that PC is completely unsuited to the job!

Member Avatar for starfox_2100

The reason I need more drives is because I make a lot of home movies and burn them to DVD.

Also, I think Nero can burn using multiple drives is this true?

Member Avatar for Catweazle

As Alex has indicated, using multiple drives to simultaneously burn DVDs would be troublesome on a PC, particularly on a moderately powered one such as yours. The idea is not really feasible.

Member Avatar for starfox_2100

Well thanks for the advice

I also checked out the link for the DVD duplicators, but there very expensive.

Looks like I’ll just stick to 1 drive

Member Avatar for thespy

Hi All

I burn a lot of DVD’s on my PC. At the monment I have a 1 burner.

I am planning on installing 3 burners altogether. So that I can burn disks at the same time.

Please could you tell me if this is possible.

The spec of my system is:

P4 1.5Ghz
512MB SDRAM PC133
80GB HDD

I am planning on buying 3 NEC 3500A DVD+/-RW Dual Layer 8.5Gb 16x Writer drives

thanks......

Hi, if you've got enough spareconnectors on your IDE cable/s ...yes you can, now as far as your writers, i would suggest the Pioneer 108, same speck , but in my eyes a more reliable drive, as with a Plextor, or even the Liteon..If possible upgrade your ram to 1gb to acomodate the extra work your pc is going to do...Have fun..Dave

If you by cheap, you get cheap, but you could also loose sleep...think..1st

Member Avatar for starfox_2100

If I were to build a new system from what kind of spec. What should I go for.

Member Avatar for Catweazle

What is the new system intended for please? Different purposes would require different components.

If the system is intended for producing large amounts of DVD copies, then there are only two realistic alternatives available:

1. Purchase a duplicating machine.
2. Contract a duplicating service to do the job for you.

If you intend to produce large quantities of different DVDs then you could add another controller card and more drives, as thespy has suggested, but as Alex mentioned earlier you'll most likely end up with lots of 'bad burns' anyway. I'm also unaware of any software designed for burning multiple DVDs concurrently or in unattended 'batch' fashion.

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