I got a 24x burner but a crappy system so I cant really write any faster than 12x but I'm about to upgrade.
What's the fastest u can write on the fly? Can u write at 24x?
Cheers for any advice

That would depend on what reader you have, but yes on the fly at 24x is possible.

On the fly, or transferring directly from a source CD is limited by three things, Your read speed, your data transfer rate and your write speed.

As a rule of thumb your read speed needs to be twice the write speed. If you are copying audio remember that the DAE (Digital Audio Extraction) is probably lower than the CDROM's quoted maximum data transfer speed.

Data transfer rate is generally limited by the I/O bus. If you have the Read device and the writter on the same IDE channel then you are going to slow the transfer down, the IDE bus can only transfer data in one direction at a time, so if the reader & writter are sharing a cable then only one device will really be using the IDE at a time.

Enabling DMA - Direct Memory Access on the CDROM & Burner can improve the performance as data can be transferred directly to & from memory, bypassing the CPU.

On-the-fly sounds really cool but in reality it's no big deal. Reading the disc image first and then burning is less of a hastle and will only take an extra couple of minutes for most unprotected CDs.

What reader would u recommend?
& what sorta price would I be lookin' at?
Cheers

Most people around here would recommend the lite-on 163.. Which is around $110 AUD or $50 USD. Excellent results on DAE and Clone CD reading. But personally I never copy on the fly...

Approximately what is the fastest possible on-the-fly speed if both the CD-reader and writer are on the same EIDE bus? (let's say reader is 40x EIDE CDROM and writer is 16x EIDE CDRW)

Would enabling DMA in this case effect the on-the-fly speed (assuming we have BurnProof enabled to prevent coasters)?

Check out the graph for the lieon 163 d dvd/cd reader at www.cdspeed2000.com

It reads all types of cd's starting at 20 speed and gradually getting faster.

As most writer start writing at 16 speed and gradually get faster this drive should fullfill your needs.

The problem with a lot of other drives is they start writing quick and as they speed up with CAV they loose the data stream and slow right down.

The lite on 163d shoukld be good enough for the new 40 speed drives. Problems will occur when it struggles to read cheaper cdr's when the speed has to drop to compensate.

I own a plextor 40 tsi which has been great for years, but the lite on 163 d nows beats it in all categories.

The worst senario is that burn proof will cut in for a few seconds but this is a minor detail.

I suggest you download cdspeed2000 and check out your cd rom drive, i bet you will be supprised hoe bad it performs.

Test it with
1) an audio cd
2) a pc data cd
and
3) a MODE 2 playstation cd.

There are hardly any drives that can read a psx cd at fast rate, but the lite on can with firmware GH5E