I am a total n00b to this process but after countless hours at the computer, trial and error and reading waaaay too many forums on waaaay too many sites I have finally found a group of settings that give me consistent results when burning my back-ups. Below is how I did it (based on DrunkenNinja's guide http://team-xecuter.com/forums/showthread.php?t=74721), and thought this might help you in your quest for the benchmarks.
XGD3 Quality Benchmarks (per TX and C4):
PI MAX should be 100 or less & PI Average should be 5 or less
PIF MAX should be 4 or less & PIF Average should be 0.20 or less
Nero Discspeed score of 90 or better.
Ubergeeks Results
First off, it took me about 15-20 burns to get here, so if you are not prepared to do that, stop right now. Even if your settings are correct, from what I have read, it takes at least 8 burns for your drive (using Smartburn) to “learn” how to get good results. I would advise that you decide on whose settings you want to start with and stick with them for at least those first 8 burns before you start tinkering with the settings. You should see some improvement as you do more burns, AS LONG AS YOU DON’T CHANGE ANYTHING ELSE.
Listen to what everyone has told you. No two computers are alike therefore there is no right or wrong as there are countless possibilities and combinations that may work best for you. Trial and error is the only way. It’s like trying to break a code.
My hardware – Internal iHAS 524 B on SATA port 1 & Singapore Verbatim MKM 003’s. When I first started I tried using MKM 001’s at 2.4x and over-speed burning at 4x with little success. Also this just gives you more variables to screw with thus more possible coasters. Desktop Quadcore intel i5 w/16 MB ram (b cuz I edit video), MSI Motherboard. It took me an hour just to figure out that my MB doesn’t allow me to change from SATA to IDE or any other fancy settings so the ports are all SATA.
Inspect your disks. I noticed that the edges of some disks (4 out of 30 in the spindle) looked a little "funky" (sparkles?). Moved them to the bottom of the stack & didn't use those.
My .iso files (ALL “green” in abgx) are on the same drive as my OS. (Win7 Pro 64 bit)
DO NOT TOUCH THE UNDERSIDE OF THE DISK!! Fingerprints gave me a 400 PI Max on a disk that was a 43 when I first ran it through Kprobe.
1. REBOOT BEFORE EACH BURN Again, REBOOT BEFORE EACH BURN (This was the final step along with NOT clearing OPC History once I got a good burn that got me over the top)
Edit - I got 8 good burns in a row then got a few bad ones. I cleared OPC History again and got good burns again. Not sure why, but it worked without changing anything else.
2. Disconnect internet, turn off anti-virus/malware programs, go to task manager’s applications tab and make sure there are no applications running. (Not doing this is definitely one of the reasons why it took me so many burns) Burning in safe mode made no difference for me, but it may for you depending on how much junk you have running in the background that isn’t on the applications tab in task manager. (During one of my burns, even though I had turned off Norton AV protection a pop-up came up saying that Norton was tuning up my PC. That burn was bad.) I got my best burn after I also turned off the function that put my monitor to sleep every ten minutes. Once you have done this, you can concentrate on your settings without having to worry about updates starting up etc.
3. Run Eeprom – Smartburn ON, Online HT ON, Force Hyper Tuning ON. (These can also be set in Imgburn but I read somewhere that it’s better to do it from Eeprom so that’s what I did) I cleared OPC History before each burn until I got a good burn, then stopped clearing and they got better each time.
4. My Imgburn settings- Default and 4x speed except “Perform OPC Before Write” ON (under Settings/Write tab). Burn Proof set to ON (off gave bad results). No need to check verify since you are going to run Kprobe.
5. DO NOT TOUCH THE UNDERSIDE OF THE DISK!!
Fingerprints gave me a 400 PI Max on a disk that was a 43 when I first ran it through Kprobe.
6. DO NOT TOUCH THE COMPUTER AFTER YOU START Imgburn!
7. Burn….(naturally, wait for it to finalize)
8. I eject the disk and let it “cool off” for a minute or two before running Kprobe. (Not sure if this is necessary but I read it somewhere)
9. Run Kprobe. DO NOT TOUCH THE COMPUTER AFTER YOU START Kprobe! (leave it disconnected from the net etc.)
10. Name and save the results by clicking the “Save Results” button to the right of the stop button and review. The reason for viewing the results .png image is because the final numbers may be higher than what is showing on the completed scan page.
Playing around with these settings some more might get me even better results but my eyes and ass are sore so I’m satisfied with what I’ve got. My best Kprobe result (shown below) was achieved about 4 burns after I stopped checking "Clear OPC Before Write" until I god a bad burn then cleared it again.
If anybody has any ideas on how I might improve these, or if I have given bad info please let me know.
XGD3 Quality Benchmarks (per TX and C4):
PI MAX should be 100 or less & PI Average should be 5 or less
PIF MAX should be 4 or less & PIF Average should be 0.20 or less
Nero Discspeed score of 90 or better.
Ubergeeks Results
First off, it took me about 15-20 burns to get here, so if you are not prepared to do that, stop right now. Even if your settings are correct, from what I have read, it takes at least 8 burns for your drive (using Smartburn) to “learn” how to get good results. I would advise that you decide on whose settings you want to start with and stick with them for at least those first 8 burns before you start tinkering with the settings. You should see some improvement as you do more burns, AS LONG AS YOU DON’T CHANGE ANYTHING ELSE.
Listen to what everyone has told you. No two computers are alike therefore there is no right or wrong as there are countless possibilities and combinations that may work best for you. Trial and error is the only way. It’s like trying to break a code.
My hardware – Internal iHAS 524 B on SATA port 1 & Singapore Verbatim MKM 003’s. When I first started I tried using MKM 001’s at 2.4x and over-speed burning at 4x with little success. Also this just gives you more variables to screw with thus more possible coasters. Desktop Quadcore intel i5 w/16 MB ram (b cuz I edit video), MSI Motherboard. It took me an hour just to figure out that my MB doesn’t allow me to change from SATA to IDE or any other fancy settings so the ports are all SATA.
Inspect your disks. I noticed that the edges of some disks (4 out of 30 in the spindle) looked a little "funky" (sparkles?). Moved them to the bottom of the stack & didn't use those.
My .iso files (ALL “green” in abgx) are on the same drive as my OS. (Win7 Pro 64 bit)
DO NOT TOUCH THE UNDERSIDE OF THE DISK!! Fingerprints gave me a 400 PI Max on a disk that was a 43 when I first ran it through Kprobe.
1. REBOOT BEFORE EACH BURN Again, REBOOT BEFORE EACH BURN (This was the final step along with NOT clearing OPC History once I got a good burn that got me over the top)
Edit - I got 8 good burns in a row then got a few bad ones. I cleared OPC History again and got good burns again. Not sure why, but it worked without changing anything else.
2. Disconnect internet, turn off anti-virus/malware programs, go to task manager’s applications tab and make sure there are no applications running. (Not doing this is definitely one of the reasons why it took me so many burns) Burning in safe mode made no difference for me, but it may for you depending on how much junk you have running in the background that isn’t on the applications tab in task manager. (During one of my burns, even though I had turned off Norton AV protection a pop-up came up saying that Norton was tuning up my PC. That burn was bad.) I got my best burn after I also turned off the function that put my monitor to sleep every ten minutes. Once you have done this, you can concentrate on your settings without having to worry about updates starting up etc.
3. Run Eeprom – Smartburn ON, Online HT ON, Force Hyper Tuning ON. (These can also be set in Imgburn but I read somewhere that it’s better to do it from Eeprom so that’s what I did) I cleared OPC History before each burn until I got a good burn, then stopped clearing and they got better each time.
4. My Imgburn settings- Default and 4x speed except “Perform OPC Before Write” ON (under Settings/Write tab). Burn Proof set to ON (off gave bad results). No need to check verify since you are going to run Kprobe.
5. DO NOT TOUCH THE UNDERSIDE OF THE DISK!!
Fingerprints gave me a 400 PI Max on a disk that was a 43 when I first ran it through Kprobe.
6. DO NOT TOUCH THE COMPUTER AFTER YOU START Imgburn!
7. Burn….(naturally, wait for it to finalize)
8. I eject the disk and let it “cool off” for a minute or two before running Kprobe. (Not sure if this is necessary but I read it somewhere)
9. Run Kprobe. DO NOT TOUCH THE COMPUTER AFTER YOU START Kprobe! (leave it disconnected from the net etc.)
10. Name and save the results by clicking the “Save Results” button to the right of the stop button and review. The reason for viewing the results .png image is because the final numbers may be higher than what is showing on the completed scan page.
Playing around with these settings some more might get me even better results but my eyes and ass are sore so I’m satisfied with what I’ve got. My best Kprobe result (shown below) was achieved about 4 burns after I stopped checking "Clear OPC Before Write" until I god a bad burn then cleared it again.
If anybody has any ideas on how I might improve these, or if I have given bad info please let me know.
Last edited: