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BUFFER UNDER RUN
HOW CAN I MAKE THE "BUFFER" SIZE BIGGER TO AVOID THE
ERROR MESSAGE "BUFFER RUN OCCURRED " WHILE BURNING A CD
WITH THE HP CD WRITER.
I USE GENUINE SOFTWARE AND THE UPGRADE FROM HP BOTH ON
A WINDOWS 95 AND A WINDOWS 98 PLATFORM WITH 64 MB RAM AND
131 MB RAM EACH.
ERROR MESSAGE "BUFFER RUN OCCURRED " WHILE BURNING A CD
WITH THE HP CD WRITER.
I USE GENUINE SOFTWARE AND THE UPGRADE FROM HP BOTH ON
A WINDOWS 95 AND A WINDOWS 98 PLATFORM WITH 64 MB RAM AND
131 MB RAM EACH.
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Subject: [4-1] What does "buffer underrun" mean?
It means you have an attractive new coaster for your table.
The CD writing process can't be interrupted in mid-session. To prevent this from happening, the makers of CD recorders put a write buffer in the drive, usually 512K or 1MB. Data read from the hard drive, tape, or another CD is stored in the buffer, and pulled out as needed by the recorder.
If the recorder requests data from the write buffer, but there's none there, it's called a buffer underrun. The disc is still spinning, but there's no data to write, so the recording process aborts.
You can still use the disc with multisession CDROM drives by closing the session and starting another, assuming there's enough space left on the CD, and assuming your pre-mastering software didn't choose to finalize the disc for you.
Advice for preventing buffer underruns is scattered throughout this FAQ. A brief summary:
Use a fast, AV-rated hard drive (i.e. one that doesn't do slow thermal recalibrations).
Record at a slow speed - it takes longer to empty the buffer when recording at 1x.
Don't do anything else with the computer while recording. Don't record from a file server!
Defragment your HD, especially if you're doing on-the-fly recording.
Record from an ISO image file rather than on-the-fly.
Depending on your setup, putting the recorder and your hard drive on separate SCSI controllers may be necessary.
Also watch out for things like anti-virus programs that wake up, virtual memory settings that cause swapping, screen savers that activate during the CD creation process, unusual network activity, and background downloads of data or faxes. One way to check is to run the HD defragmenter in Win95. If it restarts every few seconds, it's because something is hitting the drive.
Most Win95-based software recommends turning off Auto Insert Notification. Having this on can interfere with closing sessions or even just inserting discs into the drive. You can disable it by opening the "System" icon in the Control Panel, and selecting "Device Manager". For each item under CDROM, select the device, click on the "Settings" tab, and make sure the "Auto Insert Notification" checkbox is unchecked. [With my setup I get SCSI errors when AIN is off for my CD-R but on for my CDROM, even if the CDROM drive isn't in use at the time.]
http://www.adaptec.com/cdrec/technotes/bufunder.html has a comprehensive set of buffer underrun info.