i just burned a cd with cdrecord and saw that they have added output for the current burn speed on the verbose output. Watching this output really confused me. passing a speed of 40 to cdrecord it recorded the first 100mb at 16, then stopped, and started again at 20, then 36 then 32 then finally 40 for the final 150mb. Why is it doing this? it's not gradualy getting faster it is doing blocks of data at a different speed, I can then hear the drive spin up to a faster speed at definite intervals.

If i tell cdrecord to burn at 40 why doesn't it just get on with it?

Chris, I think that the chunk thing might be your burner? Mine does start at 19/20 and slowly moves faster and faster, very smmoth and gradual. This is normal, the disc gets written to faster the further out it goes, just as reading it goes as well. Eventually once it gets near the end it's running at 42/43.

It's not cdrecord specific, it's burning in general that does this.

Cool