Why does it take so long to read media in optical drives??

For the time optical media has been out, why does it still take so long, around 30 seconds, for a optical disc to be read or reconized by the O/S (2k)?
I understand it has to spin up (a few seconds) and read the TOC (a few seconds, or should be), but why should/does that take what seems forever? The whole computer is at the mercy of this process since you can't do anything else while this is taking place. Even opening another folder doesn't happen untill the O/S reads the disc.

It doesn't seem to matter if it is a plain old CD or a DVD movie. Neither does what type of drive it is or how old the drive is. Mind you, I run a 'lean' machine without the usual 30 or 40 processes running at startyup I see many other with.

I could understand when they first came out, but that was light years ago (in computer time).

Input please.

your problem is not typical. I haven't had an optical drive take that long EVER... even back in the early 90's when the first optical drive I had came with a Power Mac Performa.

Sounds to me like you need to change the drive's access mode to DMA .

It's never been any different for any copmuter I have seen, used, owned, installed. Maybe 20 seconds at the least, but the system still 'freezes' when the media is inserted untill the O/S can figure what it is.
AFAIK, it is set to DMA. That is only done in the bios correct?

videobruce said:

AFAIK, it is set to DMA. That is only done in the bios correct?

Click to expand...

Check in Device Manager (under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers) to make sure DMA is enabled...

It's enabled. I use the nForce2 driver package.