Optical drives killing my PC

[Mentally Saturated]

Hi folks,

Have been working my way through a most unenviable task.. copying my DVD collection over onto my lastest project... a custom NAS built using a 12 year old PC. I'd be lying if I said it's all been plain sailing, but for the most part, it has been... and the result is fantastic, with all my media available to my networkable media player. Cost so far has been about $30 for a 4-port PCI SATA card and a few SATA cables and power converter cables... plus the cost of the 3 x Seagate 2Tb drives I've currently got in it.. ;) Sometime next year I'll cough up for a better case (or I'll custom modify one) that'll hold more drives and have a better PSU and cooling than the current ancient mini-tower.

Anyhoooo...

The creation of ISO images from my backup DVDs is taking faaar too long. Usually, a DVD read for a single layer disc would be 12-14 minutes, as I recall (it's been a while since I made any backups). Most discs now are taking an hour to read.. and the fact that I have around 400 discs to copy is just filling me with enthusiasm for the task..:eek:

Yes, I expect the drives need a clean (have been trying to get my hands on one), and I expect some of the discs I'm reading from will contain errors (cheap 'n' nasty media), which also slows the read process down.. :( I've also noticed that the drives aren't spinning up to full read speed as they usually would - they're very quiet, so the read speed appears to be minimal.

What's got me confuzzled is the extent to which all this work is affecting my PC overall. I can't risk doing any file transfers across to my NAS whilst I'm reading a DVD disc (the files end up being corrupted, which causes mayhem with the NAS). My system can't even play an MP3 file properly without breaking up or slowing down whilst copying is in progress. Both CPU cores are showing over 50% use while the DVD disc is being copied.

Something is amiss here... but I have no clue what it is.. :\

System Info: Intel Core2Duo Q8500 3.16GHz, HD5770, 4Gb Kingston RAM, WinXP Pro SP2, 2 optical drives (1 DVD-RW, 1 DVD combo drive, both use IDE interface).

Any ideas ?

Gary

[KeithW]

Depending on your internet plan (speed, download cap etc) why don't you just download the movies.

Personally I don't see this as piracy as you have already paid for the movie. On a nice quick connection you can download a movie in about 15 minutes. Usenet is your friend.

[Mentally Saturated]

Yep.. the optical drives are daisy-chained together on the same IDE channel.. but I never use them together... one drive at a time. I'm aware that using them together triggers channel on/off states, etc.. ;)

The HDD they're being copied to (ie, where I'm temporarily storing the ISOs before moving them to the NAS) is a SATA drive, not IDE.

I'd prefer not to waste my download quota on data I already have laying around here on DVDs. Suffice to say, not everyone can download 4.4Gb of data in 15 minutes, either. "Bully for U" if U can.. ;) About 2Gb per hour is about the best speed I've ever acheived, and that was exceptional.

The Combo drive is the oldest (ATA33), but it's been rock-solid with it's reliability. The DVD/RWdrive is ATA66, so is faster, but less reliable (it's done more work.. probably on it's last legs), so I tend to revert to the Combo drive whenever there's an issue with reading... but at this point, the reading of both drives is pathetically slow.. :(

Unfortunately, negative air pressure inside my case (due to my cooling setup) pulls dust in through every nook and cranny (especially the tray door) of the optical drives, I'm certain, hence my concern about cleaning them. Nothing much I can do about that. There's also no room around the optical drives due to other devices (they're next to each other in the drive bays.. nothing I can do about that either), so I was thinking that heat might be an issue, too... but for the past few weeks, I've been operating with the side of my case open, so I doubt it'd be a heat issue directly.

[Mentally Saturated]

Well, I ain't confident, but I haven't tried it, so I might as well give it a shot. I just started another rip, so I'll do it afterwards. Will report back tomorrow..