Why is DVD Decrypter locking up?

[dphirschler]

I've got a disc that is giving me fits! I recorded it on my standalone Philips DVD recorder. It plays back fine on both my DVD player and within VLC Player in Windows. But when I attempt to rip it in DVD Decrypter, it gets 11% or so and then locks up. The mouse pointer locks up, keyboard, everything. It's just frozen! I even reburned the disc on my standalone Philips DVD Recorder (it's a hdd recorder with a burner), but I get the same result. Lockup.

I've ripped many discs just the same way with no problems. Why now?

At this point, I am starting to think I may have a harddrive failure on my Windows PC happening. Any other ideas?


Darryl

[JohnnyBob]

Is it in standard DVD video format with a VIDEO_TS folder, .IFO and .VOB files, etc?
What kind of media are you using?
How old is your computer optical drive?
Will it rip with DVD Shrink?
Or how about DVDFab HD Decrypter?

[TJohns]

If you recorded it yourself then it won't have an copy protection on it so no need to use a "fancy" ripper software - have you tried copy-and-paste of the VIDEO_TS folder?

Trev

[JohnnyBob]

If you recorded it yourself then it won't have an copy protection on it so no need to use a "fancy" ripper software - have you tried copy-and-paste of the VIDEO_TS folder?

Trev

Depends on the source... If recorded from cable/satellite TV it could have copy protection that allows it to play from the original but not from a copy.

[DB83]

Have you tried imgburn to make an iso of the disk and then burn that (also with imgburn)

[dphirschler]

Thanks for all the responses. To answer the questions:

It is a standard DVD with VIDEO_TS folders and the like. However, since it was made on a DVD recorder, it also has a VIDEO_RM folder.

The optical drive is three years old or so. Seems to be doing fine. I also tried ripping the disc using my other drive (which is also a burner) with the same results.

I have not tried DVD Shrink (I actually forgot it did ripping too), but I have tried DVDFab HD Decrypter. And I tried ripping to ISO using ImgBurn, mounting it using Daemon Tools, and ripping that using DVD Decrypter.

I haven't tried just copying the files over either. So that should work with non-encrypted DVDs? Cool.

@JohnnyBob, the DVD recorder is connected to a digital tuner through s-video. So there is no copy "protection" embedded in the signal.

I am leaning more and more towards a failing hdd at the moment. I have three hdd's in the PC, C: which is the boot drive, F: which is the one this project is on, and G: which has other projects on it. Thinking back, G: is where I ripped the iso to, but F: is where I am trying to rip the VIDEO_TS files to and is the step at which it always locks up. But now I am starting to get slower response from the drive when I access it.


Darryl

[lordsmurf]

Failed hard drive is possible. Been there, done that.

[fritzi93]

I suppose you've tried reseating the power/data cables?

You know, of all the failing hard drives I've had, all but one was okay according to S.M.A.R.T., checkdisk completed, etc. They eventually did fail or I got disgusted and junked them. The sole exception was a Maxtor that just unexpectedly stopped and quickly got very hot. Couldn't check it or access S.M.A.R.T., and it hadn't ever acted up until then.

Can you start the project over, not using your "F" drive? The result would of course tell you if your suspicion is correct.

[dphirschler]

I think it was a hdd failure, but I may have managed to avert a total loss. After the last hang, I shut it down and looked inside my case. It was very hot near the hdds (as usual), so I restarted and noticed the hdd fan wasn't running. I've since let the hdd cool off, replaced the fan, and rebooted. Now I am backing up files from F:. I'll try another rip when I am finished backing up.


Darryl

[dphirschler]

Well, I backed up the critical things from my F: drive and then I successfully ripped the DVD onto my G: drive. So I guess the main question in the topic of this thread has been solved. It was not DVD Decrypter's fault, nor a bad burn. It was a hardware failure.

Now I will concentrate on backing up the not-so-critical-but-still-important files from f:. I don't trust the drive anymore. Is it too late to install SMART (or some other sector integrity monitoring app) on the drive?


Darryl

[lordsmurf]

Don't add anything to the drive, just use ycopy to grab the whole drive and copy to a new one. Bad files will be skipped.

ycopy is freeware: http://www.ruahine.com/ycopy-file-copy-utility.html

I just did this myself -- TWICE! -- in the past month. Lost two old drives.

[fritzi93]

I use SpeedFan and HDTune to monitor S.M.A.R.T. status and do an occasional error scan. I don't trust the former, basically okay or not okay means threshold exceeded or not exceeded. I've watched a supposedly borderline threshold value stay that way for years. (I'm thinking Seagate drives here. ) I honestly don't see much predictive value, but maybe I just don't have the technical competence. [shrugs]

Following is a quote from: Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population (Conclusion section), by Eduardo Pinheiro, Wolf-Dietrich Weber and Luiz André Barroso, Google Inc. 1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy Mountain View, CA 94043

"Work at Google on over 100,000 drives has shown little overall predictive value of S.M.A.R.T. status as a whole, but suggests that certain sub-categories of information which some S.M.A.R.T. implementations track do correlate with actual failure rates – specifically, in the 60 days following the first scan error on a drive, the drive is, on average, 39 times more likely to fail than it would have been had no such error occurred. Also, first errors in reallocations, offline reallocations and probational counts are strongly correlated to higher probabilities of failure."



So I just do an occasional scan and disregard S.M.A.R.T.