CD Spin-up Brings System to Standstill

[Piyono]

...And it's not just on my computer. I've noticed on many machines that when a CD or DVD is spinning up there are a few seconds where the system is so bogged down that even the mouse doesn't move.

I became painfully aware of this today as I was ripping a CD to my music drive (and compressing it to OGG on the fly) while trying to play back music files from the same drive. The computer came to a standstill while the CD spun up; a "standstill" being that the mouse froze and Winamp developed a thrid-degree stutter.

Apparently reading from a CD is a phenomenally difficult task for my computer and requires all available resources.

Suggestions?


Oh, hi everyone.

Piyono

 

[Handruin]

I have the same issue with my current dvd-rom drive. I don't know the remedy to the issue, but I can say that back in the day when I had a toshiba XM-6401B 40x SCSI cd-rom drive, I never had this problem. I swear I read something about this drive, and how it had the ability to begin reading a disc very early, much before the drive had spun up to it's maximum read speed. For the life of me I can't find this information again, but I'm still looking.

Anyway, this helped a lot in the situation you've described. Even my beloved SCSI plextor 40x max didn't have this feature...at least that I can remember.

 

[P5-133XL]

Make sure that you are not using PIO mode for your Cd/DVD drives.

 

[Handruin]

I checked device manager and they say "Ultra DMA 2 - Ultra33" for both opticals & Ultra DMA 5 - Ultra100 for my HD.

 

[sechs]

PIO mode pretty much kills performance when using the optical.

 

[LiamC]

Piyono,

in three words: Microsoft crap coding.

There are all sorts of non-blocking agorithms to use when doing I/O in modern operating systems, but this issue has plagued Windows from day 1. Users of dual systems don't complain (as you have a free processor to service requests), and I believe the problem isn't as pronounced on HyperThreaded P4's, SCSI equipped systems, or top-end AMD systems. The problem hasn't gone away, just that the systems are able to switch to other tasks more quickly, so the lag isn't as pronounced.

I am looking forward to dual core systems. I'd buy a duallie now if I could afford it (kids!)

 

[mubs]

LiamC is correct.

I have a duallie, and my system does not freeze for the reasons he mentions. However, if I open "My Computer" (or Win Explorer), the drive icons will not appear till the optical drive is read. So having a duallie does not fix the real problem, it only masks it. I have the same frustrating wait for the system to recognize a CD or DVD. I'm on W2k Pro.

 

[Piyono]

Well, it's reassuring to see that I'm in good company, at least...
Thanks, folks.

]-[

 

[Adcadet]

also annoyed by the problem. Happenes in my current single-CPU machine, and happened on my old 1.2GHz Athlon dualie.