Re: [Dvdrtools-users] Re: [Fwd: Re: Is my MSI DR8-A2 broken?]

[Svante Signell]

On Fri, 2005-12-30 at 12:08 -0500, Bryan J. Smith wrote:
> On Fri, 2005-12-30 at 09:15 +0100, Svante Signell wrote:
> > You are probably right. I did try to burn a 4.4GB image with dvdrecord
> > to a DVD-R with a corrupt disk as result.
> 
> Again, 4.7GB = 4.35GiB.  You probably ran out of room if it's 4.4GiB
> (which most OS/utilities report as 4.4GB, but GB = 2^30, not 10^9).

No I did not, The file size is 4685914112 bytes which is less than 4.7 GB. 
This corresponds to 4.364GiB, which is less than 4.377 GiB = 4.7E+9/(1024)^3

> > DRV+R does not work, right?
> 
> Understand there is more than just the formats.
> 
> DVD Consortium (Pioneer, Matsushita, Toshiba, etc...) firmware designs
> are different than DVD+RW Consortium (Sony, Philips, HP, etc...).  It's
> a very, very long and drawn out story.
> 
> Although most DVD Consortium drives also do DVD+R/RW today, and most DVD
> +RW drives do DVD-R/RW today, the firmware/command sets are _different_.
> 
> CDRecord was designed around the existing, "byte-by-byte" (character)
> record mechanism, which DVDRecord (CDRecord 1.x), CDRecord-ProDVD
> (CDRecord 2.0) and CDRecord+DVDpatch (CDRecord 2.0) are all based on.
> CD-R can work that way.  DVD-R can work that way.  DVD+R can_not_.
> 
> Now Jorg has added limited block writing to CDRecord-ProDVD as of 2.0.
> This is DVD+R/+RW drive support for _only_ when using DVD-R (and
> "record" emulated DVD-RW) media.  With 2.0a11, he has added experimental
> support for DVD+R (and DVD+RW) on Ricoh firmware DVD+R/RW drives.
> 
> Pretty much _all_ drives today are supported with block writing at the
> kernel level.  CDRecord design is not designed for such.  I'd really
> have to go back into the history of CD/DVD drives, as well as the Linux
> kernel development.
> 
> Long story short, until about 2003/2004, most "player" devices didn't
> have the "brains" to read arbitrary media formats, track/sessions and
> filesystems.  And prior to about 1999, most recorder devices didn't
> either.  Once block write (again, circa 1999+) and player block
> reading/media virtualization (again, circa 2003+) became commonplace,
> then block writes could be done, and read by players.
> 
> I still prefer CDRecord in Disc-at-Once (DaO) or Session-at-Once (SaO)
> modes, with burnproof _off_, with CD-R and DVD-R because it produces the
> most universally compatible and longest lasting recordings.  But I
> agree, for common use, it's overkill as of 2004+.

Thanks for the info, it gives a good background on this issue! So, in
conclusion I should use dvd+rw-tools for DVD+R/RW and have a choice of
dvd+rw-tools,dvdrecord,cdrceord+DVDpatch,cdrecord-Pro for DVD-R/RW.
Additionally, my NEC ND4551A suports DVD-RAM. Which tool to use for that
media?

> > I've seen on the web that some burners don't work well in placed on a
> > slave position.
> 
> ATA DMA modes were _never_ designed to have more than 1 device on a
> channel.  The master/slave design is a legacy EIDE approach that ATA
> drives only support for backward compatibility.  Unless both devices are
> in PIO mode, expect to have DMA performance and other compatibility
> issues -- especially if they are not the exact same vendor, let alone
> model sometimes.

Do you say that if I write a file located in /dev/hdc and the writer is at 
/dev/hdd, i should disable DMA for both drives?

> > Furthermore, the image I tried to write was on the same
> > IDE drive. Obviously problems can occur with DMA transfers, reducing the
> > speed greatly. In any case, the resulting DVD-image should not be
> > corrupt, would it?
> 
> Yes, it can be if there is a bus timeout -- which exponentially
> increases if you have 2 different ATA DMA devices on the same bus.

Are you really sure here? This is a trap many people can fall in. If
this is true, a _dangerous_ warning should be issued whenever an DVD
burner is installed on an IDE drive. This would then apply to all
burners installed in PC, Linux Windows, etc computers. What about the
case of copying files from one hard disk to another, for
example /dev/hda to /dev/hdb? In that case the file transfers should
never finish. Since I've never heard about this problem, it is hard to
believe! 

> > On the problematic burner, I even tried an audio CD.
> > The result was that the CD was unplayable, extreme lagging, multiple
> > songs at once, etc. The burner has now been returned, using the two year
> > warranty from MSI. 
> 
> Recording to CD-RW or DVD-RW in emulated CD-R or DVD-R modes,
> respectively, can reduce both recorder and player lifetime.
> 
> And don't get me started on using standard CLV CD-RW media in
> Sony/Philips CAV CD-RW (what I retroactively call CD+RW ;-).  I've seen
> people utterly destroy their drives in no time doing such.
> 
> At least with DVD-RW and DVD+RW, you _know_ they are CLV and CLV-Z,
> respectively.  With CD-RW, you can really cause some damage if you use
> CLV media in a CAV mode.
> 
> 
-- 
Svante Signell <address@hidden>