Anybody burn multiple CD-Rs at once?

Has anybody ever tried burning like 4 or 5 cd-rs at the same time on one system?

The first issue or two of Above All maybe end up being on CD now because the printer is being really annoying and refusing to print anything without me giving him the names and adresses of everybody who is getting a copy and I'm just not like that so he's not getting sh*t. Anyways, I'd have to burn about 1000 CDs, over the course of maybe 2 weeks or so, and the most I could spend on drives is like $150 and maybe around $300-$400 on CD-Rs, so i was thinking of just buying 4 or 5 52x burners with 2MB cache and an assload of CD-Rs and labels. The thing is, depending on what i'm burning I usually get over 30 buffer-underrun errors (they're avoided, but it still has to stop the drive and refill the cache), and with only 512MB of pc3200 and an Athlon XP-m 2500+ @ 2400MHz I'm worried that it just won't be able to handle the extra load without errors.

All of the drives would be identicle and i would be using Nero 6 Enterprise Edition (Biggest waste of money ever! If this works out I may need it though...)

Don't know what other info you need, but any help would be greatly apreciated!

I think you can get CD duplicators which have 1 CDROM and a few CDWriters. Something like that may be your best bet.

Those are like a few thousand dollars though...

Do you think it would work? I mean, I could even just run them at a slower speed or something...

What kind of burner do you have? A 2mb buffer you'd have no chance.

There's a REASON that multiburners cost as much as a very good computer with several burners would. You'd be able to do it, but with a much bigger budget. Something like SMP or clustering, or some network-type-thing would do it better.

I don't have any yet...

Mine melted a cd-r a little while ago and I haven't used it since...

Is there any way to burn a disk image or just plain files and folders onto a cd using a burner that is on another computer? Like, can I use nero on this computer to remotely burn cds on the other computers in my house?

Is there any way to burn a disk image or just plain files and folders onto a cd using a burner that is on another computer? Like, can I use nero on this computer to remotely burn cds on the other computers in my house?

Click to expand...

Yes and no, you cant use the nero on the computer you are using locally. You will have to remote desktop to your home computer and use it like that. Just make sure there is a disk in the drive and burn away.

EDIT: I mean you will have to have nero on your home computer and burn, has nothing to do with the system you are physically using.

I see...

That's way too complicated and would probably take too much time...

If they had 8MB of cache, would that help a little? do you think I would be able to use at least 2 or maybe 3 burners at once that way?

Why dont you buy a dvd burner? Do they HAVE to be cd format or something?

iwillburnbush said:

The thing is, depending on what i'm burning I usually get over 30 buffer-underrun errors

Click to expand...

Do you get these errors when you're burning just a single CDR?
If so, make sure DMA is enabled.

I'm pretty sure your system should be able to handle at least 4 burners.

There are a few things you should keep in mind:
1) Your HDD should have a sustained transfer rate of at least 40MB/s.
2) Don't hook up a burner on the same IDE channel as your HDD is (IDE channels can only handle one command at a time, when you're burning 4 CDR's at the same time your HDD is going to need all the bandwith it can get).
3) Close all programs (as many as possible) running in the background.
4) Don't start applications/programs while burning.
5) Keep all data that needs to be burned in the same folder and defrag your HDD before burning.

iwillburnbush said:

Those are like a few thousand dollars though...

Click to expand...

They're not that expensive, a CD/DVD duplicator with 4 NEC 2510A 8X DVD +/- R/RW burners costs about $700.

tom10167 said:

What kind of burner do you have? A 2mb buffer you'd have no chance.

Click to expand...

To a certain extend it doesn't really matter how big the buffer is, if your HDD isn't fast enough to keep the buffers filled eventually they will run empty, the buffer underrun will only be postponed.

i guess this solution might work, how many computer can you "uses" during this period of time? if 2 or more then it wouldn't be a problem, if one then it'll be kindda slow. Here's what i'm thinking, 2 burner, and 2 HDD, that way 1 burner is hooked up to 1 HDD and you won't have buffer under run, and CDR burns relatively fast, about 4 to 5 min at 48X, problem is you have to sit at the computer like all the time, 1000 disc is alot

I've successfully burned two different CDs at the same time before, and both of my drives are on the same IDE channel, so it is certainly possible to do this without too much trouble. Also, Nero supports using multiple recorders simultaneously, which may be something to look into as it could alleviate some of the problems with hard disk speed.

Yep, this can be done. I've got 4 drives in my setup now and have been successfully burning on three of them at the same time, at full speed (40x CD, 48x CD and a 4x DVD). The data was coming from ISO images stored in the local hd for two of them, and remotely through the LAN for the third. The last drive was al the same time checking/verifying a CD.

In fact, I did this experiment mostly for fun, to see if the system could cope with all that.. and my system is a bit outdated already, as you may see...

So, if you are having troubles it may be a lack of tuning :
- Not having DMA mode set correctly for the hd or CD/DVD drives... or
- Not enough memory ... and excessive swapping o... or
- disk fragmentation ... or
- user/system background tasks interfering, ... or
- burning directly from many small files in your hd instead of a single, unfragmented ISO file,... or
- whatever

Be very careful and check all of that, but you should be able to get this working.