CDRW Transfer Rate and Verify Speed

[Geoff_Spraguer]

Hello all!

 

I have a Yamaha 16/10/40 IDE drive which copies files in Desktop at about 100-105 Mb/m, and verifies at 80-90 or so. Restore speed is about the same. I prefer CDRW over magnetic media for my "Armageddon" backup. Still use file backup on separate partition for "Best case scenario" restore option.

 

I am building a new system and I would like to know if, for instance, a 24/10/40 IDE would increase the speed of one, or both of these operations. Is a 24x write speed 50% faster than 16x? What about 32x, and 40x? Is there a software or system limitation to this process?

 

The new system supports ATA 133. Would a faster disk help?

 

Any comments from users attaining faster speeds w/ CDRW would be greatly appreciated!

[ChuckS]

Generally speaking, yes, a 24x drive is 50% faster than a 16x drive, and so forth. However, not all drives are created equal, and not all drives handle packet media gracefully. Some devices require a buffer flush after each write operation with variable packet data, and the final throughput with Retrospect will be much lower with than with streamed data. It all depends on the actual mechanism you are using.

 

 

 

Regarding the ATAPI bus speed, the faster the better, as you might expect. Native ATA 133 source volumes will certainly help speed the backups, but generally the bottleneck is at the backup device; a very fast hard drive has no net effect if the CD burner you are writing to can't possibly write data as fast as the source hard drive can read it.