SuperDrives not burning at advertised speed (#4): Confirmation for faster record sessions with Dragon Burn
Continuing our coverage (3-31, 4-1, 4-4 of an issue where SuperDrives -- particularly mechanisms manufactured by Matshita -- do not burn DVDs at rates in the range of the advertised speed, we've received notes from a handful of readers confirming that the utility Dragon Burn often provides burn rates closer to the SuperDrives' advertised speed than Roxio's Toast, the Mac OS X Finder or Disk Utility.
MacFixIt reader Randy Smith writes:
"I too have noticed that when burning Discs with Toast that if the 'Best' speed setting is selected you may not get the fastest speed out of your drive. Dragon Burn, which I picked up as a special deal from NTI for 10 dollars has always burned them much faster.
"The other problem mention in the article about Toast, failed discs, I have had since version 6 came out. No matter what speed, disc brand or DVD drive I use I usually get the error "Sense key Medium error" when burning with toast. I have 1 Pioneer A04 drive internal Superdrive and 1 pioneer A09 and 1 pioneer 109 drive both in FireWire enclosures. I have about 10 different brands of DVD media ranging in speeds from 1X to 8X and Toast will report errors about 50 percent of the time, sometimes even before actually starting to burn. Dragon Burn has yet to make a coaster so it has become my program of choice in burning discs. Strangely Roxio Popcorn has been error free burning to the same DVD's Toast has problems with."
Feedback? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.
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