Posted by Chet Skapczynski on 11/16/31 11:46

Greetings.

I have an IOMagic Model IDVD16DL which is an internal drive that is
supposed to be able to Read and Burn DVDs and CDs in all popular formats
including +R, +RW, -R, -RW, and +R Double Layer 16x16x8 -- or so says
the box it came in, at least! :-)

I also have Nero Version 6 as my CD/DVD burning software. I have been
using CDs for backup and decided that DVDs with their 4.7GB capacity
would be much better for backing up files on my hard drive. I used to
use SONIC 7.0 with DLA for my backup on Rewritable CDs but I gave that
up when I couldn't make DLA work properly with DVD -RW blanks. I gave up
Sonic in favor of Nero. I am not using InCD.

I went to my local Walmart and bought a 15-pack of MAXELL DVD -RWs and
proceeded to TRY to create data files of my hard drive folders and files
to DVD -RW. But I simply CANNOT finish a burn session on these beasts
without encountering a write error -- write lead shorted out, usually.
It happened at first with the SONIC and DLA -- I could format the blank
OK but it wouldn't write without getting errors -- so I abandoned SONIC
for NERO. I have erased each disk with NERO Full Erase, sometimes 2 or
3 times in a row on the same blank before trying to write again. The
"erase" always finishes cleanly but the NERO write will inevitably fail,
not always at the same spot on the DVD blank. I am using
"Multiple-session" writes, because I want to be able to continue to
write files to the DVD until it comes close to being full. It also
happens when I use a "fresh" blank right off the spindle, one which
hasn't been written on and failed and erased. I have been able to write
video files to DVD -R blanks with this burner and they are OK but I
didn't try writing data to DVD -Rs because I thought it would be more
economical to use -RWs which I could erase and reuse when the backed-up
data was no longer required.

Is it foolish to try to use DVD -RW as a medium for binary data? Do I
need to clean the laser on my burner? (it's still pretty new) do I need
to get a different burner, different blanks?

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

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