Backup a Backup???

[buckeejit]

I am sick of trying to backup a backup and it said that it cannot read the backup disc therefore resulting in a coaster. Is there anyway of checking to see if a disc has bad data/sectors on it?

[budz]

first of all what software did you use to burn the burnt disc? what brand is the dvd media? download dvdinfo pro or cd/dvd speed to check for bad sectors.

[jimmalenko]

If you want two backup copies, I'd either burn two copies when you first backup your original or alternatively, just pull out your original again and create a new backup from it

[ebenton]

After you make your first copy, put the copy of the DVD (not the original) back into your DVD burner, or better yet, into another DVD drive, either DVD-ROM or burner, and run DVDInfo or Nero CD/DVD Speed.
You can run various tests on disks with either of these programs. Usually, the transfer rate test in Nero will find out if there are any read errors. Read errors on this test will mean that your disk is not copyable, at least using that drive to read it.
In DVDInfo, you can also test for read errors. Bad results mean the same thing here, also.
If you keep getting read errors every time you copy a DVD, try different media. Often, cheap or less-compatible media will cause read errors. Some brands of disk will burn successfully in one brand of burner, but fail in another, or seem to be successful, but have read errors after you're done.
Most read errors are mostly ignored by set-top, standalone DVD players. They just ignore them or skip over them. Unfortunately, most copy software controlling a DVD drive in your computer cannot do this. It must be able to read every block on the disk, or it can't make a copy.
Some copy software, such as DVD Fab Decrypter, seems to be good at ignoring and skipping over at least some read errors when copying. You should try that before you give up completely.

[jtoolman2000]

Yep - Re-backup the original! If it's not a movie but a home prodiced event disk and that is all you have, you are stuck. Try diferent readers to see wich one is less finicky. Scan it with too; like nero CD speed. If it makes it through that then it should be able to be copied. You can simply open the disk and directly copy the files to the HD. If there are unreadable error then that's all you can do.

[bbanderic]

You may need a firmware update on your DVD writer, media possibly incompatable with your burner. You should be able to burn a good backup of a backup, if not obviously there's a problem. It's hard to help you without more info, burner type, media used, software used.

[buckeejit]

I'm using Nero, my burner is Lite-On DVDRW SOHW-832S and the discs that I am using are Datawrite Yellow (8x) DVD-R.

[ROF]

I am sick of trying to backup a backup and it said that it cannot read the backup disc therefore resulting in a coaster. Is there anyway of checking to see if a disc has bad data/sectors on it?

First of all, never do a backup from a disc to a disc with burning technology. It can be done, but two things can occur which are not desirable. You've found out what one of those is. Coaster making increases exponentially when two optical drives are working inside the same system at the same time.

My suggestion is to rip the backup onto a temporary storage device (ie. computer hard disk). This will prevent rip coasters. Next, if you are having problems while burning at max speed, reduce it by one or two steps. If your burner is capable of 16x burn speeds, drop this back to 12x or even 8x. This will reduce the workload and reduce the chance of a coaster being made during the bruning process.

[buckeejit]

thanx for the help guys. I have come across another problem, when I have ripped a dvd and I have burnt it I now check it with Nero CD-DVD Speed as suggested and they show up as

Error!
UNRECOVERED READ ERROR (031100).

Can anyone help me with this?

[lordsmurf]

First of all, never do a backup from a disc to a disc with burning technology. It can be done, but two things can occur which are not desirable. You've found out what one of those is. Coaster making increases exponentially when two optical drives are working inside the same system at the same time.

That is not true, at least not as you've stated.

When the devices are on the SAME IDE CHANNEL, that is true.

When they are on OPPOSITE IDE CHANNELS on the motherboard, that is usually not true.

When they are on SEPARATE IDE BUSES (like one on motherboard, one on an expansion card), it is pretty much never true. But the ROM needs to be on the expansion, and the BURNER needs to be on the motherboard.

[Jester700]

Other working "on the fly" combos for me are one internal and one external firewire drive; it seems to work either way. And - though this seems counterintuitive to me - 2 external firewire drives on the same firewire card.

[gshelley61]

I've run into this from time to time. When I need to make another DVD copy of a backup DVD, I've found that it works more reliably to rip the backup to the computer hard drive first. The easiest thing to do is just drag the VIDEO TS folder from the backup disc on to your desktop. It will copy the entire contents, forcing the DVD-ROM to read and re-read the disc over and over if it runs into trouble spots. Sometimes ripping applications like DVD Shrink seem to "give up" more easily and produce an error message. Once you've done that, you will easily be able make copies with Nero or some other buring software.

[ROF]

@Lord Smurf

What you list will indeed minimize the chance of making coasters, but the sure fire way to avoid coasters, IMHO, is to never do a Disc-To-Disc Burn on the fly no matter what your system configuration. The little bit of extra time it takes to extract the info to an intermediary(HDD) and setup a burn cycle will be well justified in the cost savings and headaches you save by avoiding on-the-fly rips and burns.

[lordsmurf]

@Lord Smurf
What you list will indeed minimize the chance of making coasters, but the sure fire way to avoid coasters, IMHO, is to never do a Disc-To-Disc Burn on the fly no matter what your system configuration. The little bit of extra time it takes to extract the info to an intermediary(HDD) and setup a burn cycle will be well justified in the cost savings and headaches you save by avoiding on-the-fly rips and burns.

That's largely a myth.

As long as the communication is free flowing and not interrupted (like sharing IDE channels), and of decent speed (use a good ROM drive), then the source media makes no matter.

What you propose makes no real-world differences. You can get just as many coasters from a HDD sourced burn as you can a DVD-ROM sourced burn.

And you don't have to "rip" a disc that is unprotected. You're just plain old copying data.

[gjb]

I have done several (over 50)backups of backup. my cd-rom is on a separate ide channel from my Nec burner. Using Nero on the fly. the only thing is to make sure your reading at twice the speed of your burner is writing at.
In other words set the burner to write a 6x and the dc-rom to read at 12x.