How do you burn initialized DVD discs?

[Djard]

A friend gave me several stacks of DVD+R discs that my systems support. But each disc has a fine ring about 1/8" out from the center, which is different to media that has been burned. He told me that he was given about 5,000 of these discs by an elderly neighbor that would "initialize" his discs in preparation for use. I figure he had been formatting the discs, which would explain why the likes of DVDFab and Nero will not recognize the media as writable.

I did manage to drag and drop some files and folders onto my optical drive letter in Explorer and thus use some of these discs. To the best of my recollection, I inserted a disc and waited for AutoPlay to offer me the "Burn a DVD data disc" option -> closed WMP -> highlighted the video files and folders I wanted to burn in Explorer -> right-clicked in the highlighted area -> selected "Send to DVD RW" drive -> clicked "Next" (in "Prepare this blank disk" window) -> then let Windows format the disc to 4.38 GB -> right-clicked on the optical drive letter -> selected "Eject." I could then insert the disc in another system and play the video files. But I recall at some stage selecting "Mastered - Readable on all computers...".

That was a month ago, and the steps I have tried to reconstruct don't work. I wish I had wtitten down all the steps I used. Am I overlooking a step or were only the first few discs I used good. All of the discs are identified as blank in Explorer. Any ideas?

[aedipuss]

install imgburn. run it and then insert one of the dvds. select the "device" tab on the right and see what it has to say about the disc.

[Djard]

I downloaded the latest version of IMGburn from the developer; and despite exercising caution to avoid installing any one of the numerous "offers," I still found "Grab & Burn" by Rocket Division Software on my system as well as Yahoo Toolbar, which license I also specifically declined during the install process. "Yahoo Software Updater" also appeared in my registry. I don't know if any of the other stuff that was aggressively pushed by the site was installed against my wishes...a real turn-off.

Fortunately, the excellent freeware "Registrar Registry Manager" (RegLite) from the downloads page of mednetconnection.com let me quickly and safely purge the unwanted extras. Maybe I fell victim to the site's furtive efforts for the visitor to download a sponsored product.

Anyway, I managed to find the "Device tab" in IMGBurn by firstly clicking on "Tools" -> Settings -> Device. I have included a copy of the Device page.

Clicking on the "Verify Disc" in the main GUI, I get the following:

PLEXTOR DVDR PX-850SA 1.00 (ATA)
Current Profile: DVD-R
Disc Information:
Status: Incomplete
State of Last Session: Incomplete
Erasable: No
Free Sectors: 2,278,704
Free Space: 4,666,785,792 bytes
Free Time: 506:24:54 (MM:SS:FF)
Next Writable Address: 19184
Pre-recorded Information:
Manufacturer ID: ProdiscF01
Physical Format Information (Last Recorded):
Book Type: DVD-R
Part Version: 5
Disc Size: 120mm
Maximum Read Rate: Not Specified
Number of Layers: 1
Track Path: Parallel Track Path (PTP)
Linear Density: 0.267 um/bit
Track Density: 0.74 um/track
First Physical Sector of Data Area: 196,608
Last Physical Sector of Data Area: 0
Last Physical Sector in Layer 0: 0

"Drag & Drop" and "Send to" (DVD WR drive) fails. But the disc looks writeable. Any ideas as to how I might write to discs such as this?

Kind regards

[classfour]

Use "mode", "write" - that will tell you if the disc is writeable. If the disc was initialized by writing to it, it may be a problem.

BTW: have you tried writing to the disc with imgburn? Imgburn will write a DVD folder to a disc - it's more than an image burner.

[Djard]

I found IMGburn useful to determine the state of the disc, but it will not burn DVD files from the select-files panel. I like IMGBurn's GUI and ability to burn data files, but it has far too many shortcomings to keep: for example, in the supported files field, IFO, BUP, and VOB are not even listed. Like its title suggests, IMGburn likes to work mainly with images. For video, it appears either too unfriendly or simply incapable of burning such files.

Since I was fortunate to have been given so many DVD discs, I just discard those that don't bring up aomething in AutoPlay. Maybe the ones with which I am experiencing problems have been subjected to a low level format.

Thanks for your kind attempt to help.

[Noahtuck]

You never did say exactly how this

elderly neighbor that would "initialize" his discs in preparation for use

was initializing them ?
First you said +R, then the imgburn log stated they are -R and i was wondering if they were RW but they are not according to the log.

I am guessing this person was initializing them on a standalone recorder seeing as i have never had to do any such thing on anything else but a standalone recorder.

Status: Incomplete
State of Last Session: Incomplete

I am guessing they are worthless except on the original standalone they were initialized on.

Have you even tried to actually burn something to one of the disc's ?


99% of the time all i feed into ImgBurn is either Xvids, random files & VIDEO_TS folders which contain nothing but IFO, BUP & VOB files.
You can even feed JUST IFO,BUP & VOB files into it and it will make the VIDEO_TS folder.

Burning Image's or ISO files is only a fraction of what it does and i hardly ever use it for burning image files and i use it for 100% of my burning and i have never had any issues with it, as pretty much anyone here will state.

[Djard]

I was told the old fellow had been "initializing" the DVD discs, which I see now are an assortment of -R and +R type. I understand "initializing" is the same as high-level formatting, which is a writing of zeros to the disc, creating a directory but no sector, preparing it for formatting.

Yes I have managed to successfully burn IFO and VOB files to some of the discs, using the drag & drop method in Explorer. I don't doubt that you have been able to burn such media with ImgBurn; but when I select "Write file/folders to disc" in ImgBurn then browse to a video source folder, the notice I erroneously get in the right pane is "No items match your source." I'll play with the app some more.

Perhaps some of these "empty" disks were low-level formatted, which I figure renders them no longer writeable.

Nice to hear ImgBurn is versatile. Too bad it does not include 'Disk Copy'.