Writing and Finalizing Data DVDs

[VideoSan]

I am relatively new to the DVD burning phenomenon.

I have a LG GSA-4082B external DVD burner connected via USB 2.0. I am running Windows XP Pro on an IBM A31 laptop. I also have a Teac DW-28E DVD+CD-RW internal drive in this laptop.

I've downloaded and trialed TMPGen DVD Author (TDA) with good success in burning DVDs. I've tried a combination of things, such as reading entire DVDs onto the HDD, reading from the Teac and re-authoring, working with DVD-RAMs (which my Panasonic DMR-E75V will create and which both the Teac and LG can read and the LG can write), etc. all with good success.

My outstanding problem regards DVDs, but not video DVDs.... In addition to wanting to burn video DVDs, I wanted to use this LG drive as my primary data backup drive, since the capacity of the DVD-Rs is 4.7G vs. a mere 650-700MB for a CD-R. However, I'm having great difficulty in creating a finalized data DVD (which is most interesting, being that a video DVD is a data DVD with VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS in the root and with lots of data in those directories, and the video DVDs are being created just fine by TDA).

I've tried Nero Burning ROM Version 6 and it kept stating that it couldn't write to the DVD, but each time it rendered the DVD-R useless for subsequent writing. I've tried RecordMax and it had the same problem.

The only (partial) success I've had is by inserting a blank DVD-R into the drive, right-clicking on the drive icon in Explorer, clicking on Format and getting the DVD formatted. I'm then able to use Explorer to copy folders onto the DVD. But when I right-click on the drive icon and click on Make Compatible, I'm told that can't be done on this drive.

I can eject this disk and re-insert it, and the files and still readable. But if it's not finalized, no other drive will be able to read it, and that's not as desirable.

Can anyone suggest what I can do to finalize this data DVD?

[SaSi]

When you record the DVD with data in Nero 6, which project type do you choose? You should choose DVD-ROM.

Once you choose DVD-ROM, Nero suggests three options in the MultiSession tab. Choose No MultiSession.

This option will start a new DVD (cannot continue a previous session), record and finalize the DVD.

This is how I do it with Nero and don't seem to have any problems.

[spectroelectro]

This sounds liek incompatible media to me. Some DVD burners just don't liek certain kinds of media. For instance, Ritek G04s bomb badly on a couple of brands of DVD burners but work well on almost all others. Maybe that's your problem. If you're using some cruftoidal bogus media like Princo, that could be it.
I use RecordNow Max 4.5 to burn data DVDs all the time. Zero problem. Choose DATA, drag and drop the data files, then burn. Always works. But I'm using an internal Pioneer DVR105 and Ritek G04s.