Is the Ricoh 5125 (ok, Ikebana DVD+R/RW) physically capable of extracting data from a type 2 DVD-RAM disk that's been removed from its shell? And if it IS, what program can I use to rip video recorded to one using a Panasonic DMR-E20 DVD recorder?

I tried it a while ago... putting the bare DVD-RAM disc in the drive crashed Windows XP badly enough to require physically cycling the power -- the drive lit up, made reading noises, then CPU utilization went up to 100% and Explorer just kind of hung. Trying to shut down was futile... it kept throwing up "Explorer is not responding" warnings, but telling it to go ahead and kill it didn't work.

On one hand, that could be interpreted as a Bad Sign, because Windows obviously didn't have a clue what to do with the disc. On the other hand, it suggests that the drive *WAS* physically reading and recognizing *SOMETHING*. It might have been something it didn't like, but intuitively it seems as though attempting to read a blatantly incompatible media format should have just caused an error message... not crashed Windows outright...

My current working theory is that the 5125 (and maybe other +RW drives) might be physically capable of extracting a raw byte stream from a bare DVD-RAM disc, but the current drivers don't bother to even try. Or, alternatively, the drivers can read the disc just fine, but maybe the Panasonic DMR-E20 writes data to the disc in some format known only to it (maybe even encrypting it in a misguided attempt to pacify Hollywood like TiVo does).