writing DVD-RAMs

[VJ]

Hello,

I have recently purchased 3 DVD-RAMs to ease my system backups. The problem is that the OS (XP Professional SP2 and XP Professional TabletPC Edition SP2) refuses to write them.

Plextools Professional recognizes the disk (in the drives that are compatible of course), and shows 4.7 GB available. Ideally, I would like to write to them using a drag'n'drop interface (I thought XP Professional supported DVD-RAMs).

So, how can I get this functionality?


Furthermore, I use Norton Ghost to make images of my laptop C drive. Currently, they were written to the second partition, but I would like to write the images to DVD RAMs. Norton Ghost says it can't erase the disk (I suspect it is not compatible with DVD RAMs). Are there patches for this? Or workarounds? Or alternatives?


Jörg

[Dilitante1]

waiting on Doc's reply

[cjolley]

Have you formatted them?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD-RAM

Windows XP can only write directly to FAT32 formatted DVD-RAM discs. For UDF formatted discs, which are considered faster, compatible device drivers or software such as InCD or DLA are required. This is a non-issue with Linux however, which allows the use of virtually any file system of the multitude that ship with the operating system, including UDF. Mac OS can read and write HFS, HFS+, FAT and UDF formatted DVD-RAM discs directly.

[ayoub_ibrahim]

hmm, I didn't think that the in-built burning program of XP wrote to dvds...

[az]

Wouldn't you need a Mount Rainier (sp?) driver (and compatible drive?)?

Or could you just burn them with Nero or your cd recording program of choice? (And why not just use RWs?)

[Wombat]

I don't usually use CD ROMs this way, but I remember that you could put a blank in, and then under "My Computer" right-click on the drive letter, and "prepare CD for writing" or some such.

[VJ]

Have you formatted them?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD-RAM

Oops...
Formatting to FAT32 sovled my problems!

az:
DVD-RAMs can be rewritten a larger number of times (1000 times vs. 20 times for RW disks).

Wombat:
Ah yes... Doesn't that make a CDRW ready for packet writing? (I'm not sure if it would put a FAT32 system on the disks, I now formatted via the commandline)


Only thing now is gettig Norton Ghost to write to the DVD-RAM (apparently, it wants to create a CD file system, and says the CD isn't empty, and it can't format it). Guess I can search for an update that adds DVD-RAM support...

Thanks!


Jörg

[Technoid]

Oops...
(1000 times vs. 20 times for RW disks).

Wich kind ? dvd-rw? (case I must have rewritten my old dvd+rw a hundred times)

[Nowhere]

According to Wikipedia:
Can be rewritten over 100,000 times (DVD±RW can be rewritten approx. 1,000 times).

[VJ]

Oops, guess I was wrong there...


Jörg