Do you have other programs open whilst burning CDs/DVDs?

It's not 1998 anymore, so no
Back then I didn't even want to risk anyone walking around too firmly and screwing up a burn
And it was a single speed burner, so it took a good long while. I think it was 2001 when I finally upgraded, got an Iomega 16X that was a rebadged Plextor for under a hundred bucks after rebate.

No. modern burners have buffer underrun protection which stops the burn if the buffer can't keep up, but since the data is read from a disk, you should still limit any disk activity during the burn. Anything else is fine.

Quote from B9FYwspP8J85 : No. modern burners have buffer underrun protection which stops the burn if the buffer can't keep up, but since the data is read from a disk, you should still limit any disk activity during the burn. Anything else is fine.

Buffer underrun protection doesn't stop the burn. Rather, it enables the burner to continue a burn from where it left off earlier.

Quote from kakomu : Buffer underrun protection doesn't stop the burn. Rather, it enables the burner to continue a burn from where it left off earlier.

depends on who writes the code. buffer underrun is proprietary and unique to different manufacturers.

i'm not sure i had any buffering issues with CD's when i grew up, mid 90s. i know that i would close problems that might try to access the drive. the drive is supposed to be locked but i always worried a bit.

i know i had a hard time with DVD's. i had a 4x TDK drive that i hated. early dvd-r tech sucked. compatibility was hit or miss when you copied/re-encoded dvd's.

Quote from Frogstar : It's not 1998 anymore, so no Back then I didn't even want to risk anyone walking around too firmly and screwing up a burn And it was a single speed burner, so it took a good long while. I think it was 2001 when I finally upgraded, got an Iomega 16X that was a rebadged Plextor for under a hundred bucks after rebate.

Oooh....

back then, I was on SD's even though I didn't register and the big thing was buying the Buslink's that were rebadged Liteon's at Best Buy and how to decipher if it was a Liteon or another brand by looking at certain things on the box.

Then of course there was the 6s series of Liteon's that could be crossflashed from 32 to 48 to 52x max burning speeds since the internals were all the same and it was just a matter of what firmware Liteon put on from the factory.

The Liteon's were the poor-man's Plextor's since they arrived at half the cost and got burn results that were pretty dang close to a genuine Plextor. Now, Plextor just puts their name on other peoples stuff and quality has gone downhill.

Attached is my 52246s still in my system.

Quote from dayv : depends on who writes the code. buffer underrun is proprietary and unique to different manufacturers. i'm not sure i had any buffering issues with CD's when i grew up, mid 90s. i know that i would close problems that might try to access the drive. the drive is supposed to be locked but i always worried a bit. i know i had a hard time with DVD's. i had a 4x TDK drive that i hated. early dvd-r tech sucked. compatibility was hit or miss when you copied/re-encoded dvd's.

The different technologies are proprietary, but all accomplish the same task. A buffer underrun error is when the CD-Burner's buffer runs out of data before the burn is complete. Back in the day, that would result in a coaster, because the burn needed have a continuous stream from beginning to end. Before buffer underrun protection, some drives would slow the burn down to allow the buffer to fill back up, but it would still error if the buffer runs out of data.

Buffer underrun protection, on the other hand, is able to salvage a burn if the buffer runs out by restarting the burn where it initially left off.

At work I will have outlook IE with 4-10 tabs along with Firefox with 2-8 tabs open and MS Lync 2010 along with the full McAfee Pro Anti viruse suite with Firewall and IPS I have an i5 processor running at 3.1ghz I burn data discs CD and DVD all the time at full speed no issues, I do have 16 GB of RAM just because I can

(I buy the RAM and until we are out I figure I can have 2 extra in my PC)