Hi Guys,

I have a PIII 800 MHz Windows ME machine with a 384 MB SDRAM-133 RAM memory and I recently purchased an LG 4020B DVD burner and I am looking to burn some DVDrips to DVD-R. I am not sure with this kind of hardware How long will it take for me to burn a normal 4.7GB DVD-R.

What minimum upgrades might be needed to my machine to be up and running with DVD burning without shedding much $. Please help this newbie.

Thanks

Should be able to burn DVD's fine with the system as is. However it sounds like you are talking about converting, etc. where the faster/more powerfull the system the better.

First thing I would do is replace ME with win2k or at least dual boot.

Well, you have all the hardware already. Why don't just try it? Memory looks ok. cpu a little slow. You have lot of space on HD?

1. Ripping shouldn't be a problem - use DVD Shrink or DVD Decrypter (both free).
2. Compression (re-encoding) - use DVD Shrink. This may give you the biggest performance issue. It takes 10-20 minutes on my P4 2.4 with 256MB. Let me know how long it takes on yours. Probably don't want to try the higher quality (takes longer) programs like IC7 or CCE for now.
3. Burning - I use RecordNow Max. Others have good experience with Nero, Alcohol, etc. This should not be a big problem as the limiting factor here is the write speed of your burner. ( 1x - 60 minutes, 2x - 30 minutes). What speed is your burner?

As celtic said your fine as is, the reason for replacing ME, because 1). it sucks..unstable. 2). Win2k or XP support NTFS file system, which support files over 4gig, which win98 and ME dont. Which means if you have a file over 4 gigs on ME it wont see the rest of it, look at its minimun requirements of the drive, either on a website or the box, to give you a better idea.

I have 2 separate Hard drives 40GB and 30 GB and I beleive the DVD burner speed is 2X for DVD-R however only 1X DVD-RW. But thanks alot for the reply I shall try after getting those recommended software.

When you buy a writer, the specs you need are listed on the box.

That is assuming that you get a box.

As I said though for burning you are fine, which was your question.. Not ripping, not compressing, not transcoding, just burning.

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Memorex DVD+R/+RW/CD-RW Internal IDE Drive With DVD Burning Software - Refurbished

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I had an athlon 800 w/ 256mb and couldn't burn faster than 2x - dvdshrink was also taking about 2 1/2 hours.
Upgraded to an 1800 w/ 512 and now have no problem burning at 4x and dvdshrink takes about 20 minutes. Also changed my o/s to XP.

I've got a PIII 600 with 30Gb hd and 196Mb RAM and can do anything. burning speed is down to writer. I use a pioneer A06 and burn at 4x no problems. Only problem I have is with compressing files, used to take ages with ReMPG but with programs like DVD2One now a days life is great.