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ginoledesma · 08:54 AM

Hello,

I've had my iBook G4/800 for some months now and I've been very happy with it. It replaced an aging PowerMac G4/400 since I needed mobility with my Mac.

I've been wondering about the burn speeds of the Matshita CW-8123 drive used in the iBook G4s. I'm currently using Toast 6 to burn CDs, but I've noticed that, regardless of what CD-R media I use, I can't burn at the higher speeds all the time. By "can't" I mean it seems to be burning at a slower speed.

I've compared it against a PC I have running Windows and Nero Burning ROM, as well as another Mac using Toast 6. In both computers, they use the Lite-on 52/24/52 CD-RW recorder.

Here's what I get on average:

Code:
               8X    12X    16X    24X
iBook G4       10.0m 8.0m   8.0m   6.0m*
PowerMac G4    10.0m 6.5m   5.5m   4.5m
Windows PC     10.0m 7.0m   5.5m   4.5m

The * in the 24X burning of the iBook G4 means I get varied results. At times it goes under 6 minutes, but most of the times its at 6 minutes. Toast 6 reports the "supposed" remaining time of the selected recording speed. It is accurate for 8x, such that when 1 second passes, the timer also decreases by 1 second. But at higher speeds, the time it takes for 1 second "to pass" according to Toast really means 1.5-2 seconds in realtime.

Is this normal behaviour with the iBooks/Powerbooks? I always assumed that since the iBook has a "slower" ATA bus (as opposed to a desktop), this was the case. Then I also considered the internal hard disk's speed, but the same thing happens even with my external hard disk. I suppose that the drive isn't burning at a consistent speed, adjusting its burn speed depending on the quality of the media, but so far, I've had no "great luck" with the multitudes of media I've tried.

It's interesting to note, however, that when I burn to an external CD-RW drive connected via Firewire, I get the same speeds as the Mac and PC.

I just wanted to hear from other iBook owner's experiences. It can be a bit bothering since most of the time I feel its burning at 8x since it takes roughly 10-13 minutes to complete a burn (burning + verification).