DVD and Cd burners not fast enough

I've got a 12x creative labs dvd rom and an NEC 12xsomethingx40something burner with an abit mother board and windows 98se, but when I benchmark my either with Sisoft Sandra 2001te it says they clock in at 4x. Is there a problem with Sandra 2001te or do my drives suck or something? Also my creative dvd only reads dvds for some reason, like if you put a normal cd in it it spits it back out and refuses to read it. I figure that's just because Creative sucks, because my dad got one of their burners and the eject button broke so that whenever he hits eject it crashes his computer.

This subject has been brought up before (Search Feature) basically ignore the benchmark.
Also despite the "rated" speed, your rom's slow down to a stable speed to avoid excess vibration.

yeah that's how my dad is ejecting his drive now, but you shouldn't have to do that. How about my DVDs problem? why would it only read dvds and spit out cds like it can't read them? I tried getting some new ASPI drivers or something but I can't quite remember what they were.

Hey ldogg,

Remember also that a drives rated speed is only it's fastest speed and usually only measured at the edges of the disk. When you are burning and such, the drive gradually spins up to that speed, however like uncleel said, it may only spin up to a speen it feels comfortable at.

My 56x cd-rom only benchmarks at like 16-24x depending on the weather that day.

Just remember that the computer world loves fast and high numbers, which may not be 100% true but may not be 100% false either. Everyone wants to be the fastest.

As far as CD-roms I believe Kenwoods "True Speed" drives are the fastest but who wants to spent two to three times more for a drive that is only alittle faster ??

Update the firmware or use a different disk. Don't use cdr disks.