Optical Media (Burning Issues)

[scdbackup]

Hi,

i only now noticed that Bogomips reported some problems with DVD-RW media.

To my experience, DVD-RW together with DVD+R DL are the media types which
fail first when a DVD drive begins to show symptoms of ageing. DVD+RW give
more hope for success on drives which have seen some work life.
Burning of formatted DVD-RW seems to be possible longer than burning of
unformatted (sequential) DVD-RW.
It is not so much a matter of media wear-off but rather of drive wear-off.

Differences in DVD burn success with different burn programs are either
merely incidential or caused by different write types or formatting states.
With DVD-RW there are three choices: sequential DAO, sequential Incremental,
and formatted for Restricted Overwrite.
Despite its slightly repelling name, Restricted Overwrite gives best hope
for success (but cdrecord won't accept it). To bring a DVD-RW into formatted
state, execute

Code: Select all

xorriso -outdev /dev/sr0 -format as_needed

More sessions can be appended to not-closed Incremental and to Restricted
Overwrite. DAO always closes the medium and works only on blank media.
Fast blanked sequential DVD-RW can only do DAO. That's why xorriso blanks
sequential DVD-RW fully (and slowly) if not blank mode "deformat_quickest"
is used.

The highest merit a burn program can claim is that it makes no mistakes.
Final success is a matter of burner drive and medium.

Have a nice day

Thomas

(Edited to add info about fast and full blanking.)

[scdbackup]

Hi,

above post was part of another thread. Now that it starts its own one,
i invite everybody to report problems or ask questions about CD, DVD,
and BD burning.

I am developer of libburn, which is used underneath Xfburn, xorriso,
cdrskin, and optionally under Brasero. In some cases i might also be of
help about growisofs (dvd+rw-tools), cdrecord (cdrtools), and wodim (cdrkit).

The footline shows "[x] Unsubscribe topic". So i will hopefully learn of
new posts here. It cannot harm to notify me by mail: [email protected]

Have a nice day

Thomas

[fullmoonremix]

I am currently using tkdvd and recently xfburn. I don't understand why xfburn requires BD/DVD overwrite instead of disk blanking.

[scdbackup]

Hi,

> I don't understand why xfburn (and others) requires BD/DVD overwrite instead of blank.

I have some difficulty to understand the question. It's a bit short.

There are two families of media.

Sequentials: CD-R, unformatted CD-RW, DVD-R, unformatted DVD-RW, DVD+R,
DVD+R DL, BD-R if not formatted for Pseudo Overwrite.
These media may be in one of three states: Blank, Appendable, Closed.
Closed cannot be written any more. Appendables contain some data and can
take more to form a new session. Blank contain no data and can be written.
Writing can happen only at the lowest not-yet-written block address.
CD-RW and DVD-RW can be brought back into sequential blank state after
they have been formatted and/or written.

Overwritables: formatted CD-RW, formatted DVD-RW, DVD-RAM, DVD+RW, BD-RE,
BD-R formatted to Pseudo Overwrite.
They may be written at any of their block addresses. With DVD-RW there
is the demand to align addresses and write sizes to 32 KiB.
CD-RW, DVD-RW can be unformatted to become sequential again.

growisofs (dvd+rw-tools) emulates appendability on Overwritable media which
hold a ISO 9660 filesystem.
This gives away some of Overwritables' versatility but enables the user
to handle about any optical medium the same way, as long as ISO 9660
filesystems shall be burned.
My program xorriso follows this approach and carries it a bit further.


Back to your question: I do not see yet an occasion where Xfburn would
demand an Overwritable medium instead of a Blank Sequential one.
Please give more details.

Have a nice day

Thomas

[fullmoonremix]

Previously I used CD/RW's and I preferred the disk blanking option in xfburn.
When I attempted to do the same thing with DVD/RW's I got pop-ups insisting I overwrite.

The DVD media/brand I use is Maxell DVD+RW 4.7gb.
Currently I use TkDvd which appears to overwrite.

I've been using the TkDvd default instead of options.
I'm running with default for now because it just works.

[scdbackup]

Hi,

> I got pop-ups insisting I overwrite.
> The DVD media/brand I use is Maxell DVD+RW 4.7gb

DVD+RW are in the family of Overwritables, indeed.
So burn programs can write to them without previous blanking.
Some of them, especially the GUI ones, ask the user whether this is
really intentional.

growisofs -Z wants option -use-the-force-luke to overwrite an existing
ISO 9660 filesystem. xorriso appends new sessions to existing ISOs until
its command -blank is used to devalue the existing ISO.
cdrecord, wodim, and xorriso -as cdrecord consider a DVD+RW always blank,
i.e. ready for writing from block 0. (I generally do not advise wodim for DVD.)

Actually you could put a read-write filesystem onto a DVD+RW after formatting
it thoroughly. But that's not really advisable because such filesystems
frequently update blocks with meta data and quickly wear off these blocks.

Have a nice day

Thomas

[scdbackup]

Hi,

i ran Xfburn (0.5.2 of Debian 8 ) with a DVD+RW which contains an ISO 9660
filesystem.

The task "Blank Disc" tells me "DVD+RW does not need blanking" and offers
only the "Cancel" button.
The tasks "New Data Composition" and "Burn Image" do not pop up any warning
window when i overwrite the DVD+RW.

So i seem to have a different version of Xfburn than fullmoonremix
or i did not yet find the necessary buttons.

Have a nice day

Thomas

[fullmoonremix]

I was using xfburn 0.5.4. I might have gotten the pop-up because
I think I chose blank either in the menu or setting/preferences.

I think I can try to replicate the pop-up later. However... I'm using the burner @ the moment.
I use this... (see... https://www.kanguru.com/storage-accesso ... vdrw.shtml )