Hi guys

at work I have an old 4x DVD rom drive, when I rip a DVD it rips at 4x speed, yet my 8x drive at home won't rip faster than 2x (using Smartripper or DVDdecrypter)

anyone have any idea's why?

both PC's run Windows XP pro, both are 2Ghz (one is Athlon, one is PIV) with 512Mb RAM.

what drive is the 8x? you should update it with a hacked firmware or something, the firmware it has now prolly limits the ripping speed.

I'm going to move this to the DVD forum for you.

BRUINSrock - it's a pioneed DVD-RW
ElaineM - please don't as it's a hardware issue, it could easily be a CD-ROM rather than DVD.

maybe your programs are too old to recognize the new units?

even windows won't let me take stuff from the disc faster than 2x though

is it in pio mode or dma on the ide channel?
should be dma and xp has a bug that keeps putting it to pio.

how do I check?

control panel-system-devicemanager-hardware

then check the ide channels, usually its the second ide channel
that has the glitch. look under the "advanced Settings" tab
you can delete them and reboot
and xp will put them in again. works for some people.

The problem is the fact that Pioneer has limited the ripping speed to 2x of many of its dvd products as a showing of good faith as far as the MPAA is concerned. This was supposed to show the MPAA that Pioneer, even though building and selling dvd burners was 'frowning' on copying of copyrighted mateials.

So, without a hacked firmware no matter what dma or pio settings you choose, you will be limited to 2x ripping. The hacked firmwares are everywhere and are supposed to be very good.

A start point for looking for firmware would be here(google also very helpful):
http://forum.rpc1.org/portal.php

cheers myckee.

think I'll just get a seperate DVD reader and an IDE controller (run out of IDE channels - 3x HD's & DVD-R!) rather than mess with the firmware.