Slow G4 Super Drive

[Mick F. Cantarella]

I just got a G4 933 with a built in Super Drive for CD burning and transferring. It takes about 15 minutes to transfer a 600 Mb Pro Tools session to either my external FW or internal hard drive. Backing up files to the Super Drive using the Macs burning software also takes a very long time. On my G4 450 at home with a regular CD ROM drive the same 600 Mb CD took about 4-5 minutes to copy over to the internal HD. Can anyone clue me in?

Thanks, -Mick

[sdevino]

Are yo talking about writing to DVD or CD in the super drive?

CD is 8x so it will be as fast as any 8x drive. DVDs take a while.

[c-tone]

Generally, combo drives are slower than dedicated (i.e. CD-RW only drives) here are Apple's specs from the current models off their web site:

CD-RW drive (writes CD-R discs at 24x speed, writes CD-RW discs at 10x speed, reads CDs at 32x speed)
SuperDrive (combination DVD-R/CD-RW drive; writes DVD-R discs at 2x speed, reads DVDs at 6x speed, writes CD-R discs at 8x speed, writes CD-RW discs at 4x speed, reads CDs at 24x speed)

DVD-ROM/CD-RW Combo drive (build-to-order option; reads DVDs at 8x speed, writes CD-R discs at 12x speed, writes CD-RW discs at 8x speed, reads CDs at 32x speed)

P.S. - I had my Superdrive swapped out before purchasing with a CD-RW. Faster, cheaper, and doesn't have issues when the G4 is laying on it's side in a rack.

[TXDigi]

hey Mick,

havings the same problem on my 867. I get the same very slow read speeds in OS 9 & X so its not an extension thing. I did some basic performance test and was getting around 4x-6x read speeds. 100mb files took about 4-5 minutes

sorry, no solution

[mishmash]

Yeh, the superdrive is a crappy CD Rom reader. I find it really really slow, and it has trouble reading quite a few discs. I often use my laptop to read roms. It is pretty dissapointing. Apple don't mention this in their propaganda of course!

Mesh

[Mick F. Cantarella]

>SuperDrive (combination DVD-R/CD-RW >drive; writes DVD-R discs at 2x speed, reads >DVDs at 6x speed, writes CD-R discs at 8x >speed, writes CD-RW discs at 4x speed, >reads CDs at 24x speed)

C-tone thanks for the research. These are not the speeds I am seeing. To copy a 600 Mb file in 15 minutes from a CD-R sounds more like 4x read. I wonder where the bottle neck is. -Mick

[Pietari Koskinen]

SuperDrive is well-known for its slowness as a CD reader. I copied one CD full of files to my hard drive and it took 23 minutes. Unfortunately, I think it's quite normal. [img]images/icons/frown.gif[/img]

[slickrick]

FWIW, I retained the so-called "Superdrive" as it really is great to back up to DVD..

BUT, I bought a Lacie Firewire 40x CDR-RW for those transfers etc that used to take forever on the Super-D..