DVD buring, rookie needs help

[SteveK]

I have a phillips DVD+RW-D01 and CDR combo drive. I've burned quite a few CD's with it but I can't get it to burn a DVD. I am using NERO 5.5.9.17 which has been a great program I think. Everything looks good until I actually try to burn a disk. NERO recognizes my burner, it recognizes the medium but when I try to burn it fails. The message I get is that I have an "illegal medum" What does that mean? The files that I can't burn to DVD burn just fine to CDR. I am using verbatim 4.7gig disks
I was able to get one to burn using the dialog in XP but it closed the disk with only 3 meg on it. Any and all help appreciated
Steve K

[Greg12]

u are using DVD+R and DVD+RW right?

[SteveK]

Greg12, thanks for the reply, yes I am. I was told last evening that you can't really burn data to a DVD, is that correct? I was under the impression you could use a DVD+RW disk just like a CDR. With that in mind I had planned to use it for hard disk backup stuff. I was trying to burn a bunch of Jpg's to a DVD and a Dell tech rep told me you can't do that. Is that correct?
Thanks again
Steve K

[Craig Tucker]

The Dell rep is talking out of his butt.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,6286,00.asp

Have you tried another disc. Could be that you have a bad one.

[SteveK]

Craig, thanks to you to for your reply. Actually I have tried several disks. First of course was the disk that came with my system and then I bought a 5 pack of disks. None of them seem to work and I can't believe I have that many bad disks. In fact, Nero seems to think they are okay until I try to burn. Any other ideas, thought, suggestions, etc. etc. appreciated.
Steve K.

[Craig Tucker]

Before you make any more coasters try and burn a DVD disc image to your hard drive. select recorder-choose recorder and select image recorder - virtual device. Save it to your hard drive as an ISO image. You can then use daemon tools (available from the tools section on this site) to mount the ISO image file you have created as a virtual DVD drive. So you will be able too look at this ISO image in explorer as if it were a DVD. If everything seems to be ok with the ISO image you can use nero to burn the image to your DVD (remember to set your recorder back to your DVD burner). I would suggest selecting simulate and burn, that way if there is still a problem you won't waste another disc.

I use this method to check my authored DVD images rather than using DVD-RW's.

[SteveK]

Thanks again Craig, I will try that, after I study it a little bit of course Anyway, I have an update on this continuing saga. My burner identifies itself as a DVD+RW-D01 The disk that came with my system is a DVD+RW disk. The disks that I purchased are DVD+R Now, I did just get the DVD+RW disk to work, I burned some Jpg's to it as well as some downloaded files, and some text files.

I then tried to burn the same files to a DVD+R disk and got the same error message, ie "illegal medium" Could it be that I can only use DVD+RW disks? If that's the case, I guess that's what I'll do.
I really do appreciate all your help
Steve K

[Craig Tucker]

It should work with both R and RW, but it appears that some pople have had problems burning to DVD+R with phillips drives and nero. Just did a quick search and found this on another forum. Not the same model drive, but a phillips and a very similar problem.

http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/8811

[SteveK]

Craig

Thanks again, been reading those posts and will try the test burn technique to see if it works. If it doesn't, I guess I"ll just stick with RW disks.
Steve K