DVD burner reading and writing really slowly

[unknown_citizen]

My uncle got a new DELL PC for christmas, and as usual I got lumbered with making sure everything works. I fitted an NEC 3520A DVD writer as the secondary slave, but it seems to be stuck reading and writing at 1x. The only thing I can think that may be causing this is that set to PIO mode - though even then I'm not sure whether that would cause such a dramatic effect. Is there a way to force it to DMA mode, or does anyone have any other suggestions to try?
Cheers.

[marcus]

Which Writing package are you using, or are you using XPs built in writing functionality? Id give Nero a try first of all, see if its application related.

[unknown_citizen]

I've tried a few with the same results, and used Nero Drive speed which recorded a spin up speed of 1.52x which seems stupidly low.

[unknown_citizen]

Sort-ed now. Switched it to the secondary master, and it went into dma mode and started going like the clappers.

[vertigo]

Yeh I was gonna say, have you set it to DMA mode?
Set all your drives to DMA mode, the fact that you've moved it would suggest that whatever's now on the slot it used to be on isn't running with DMA enabled.