which provides a better backup?

[archaeo]

On the fly (disc to disc) OR Hard Drive to disc?

[bazooka]

Hard drive to disc.

On the fly is not recommended.

[budz]

i agree with bazooka but you could do on the fly as long as your dvd burner and dvdrom are not connected to the same IDE controller. if they are on the same IDE then make sure the reader speed is at least double of the burning speed. i've done some disc to disc copying that way without any problems.

[archaeo]

thanks for the feedback. If I burn at 1X, that should keep it well below the read speed...

[Sifaga]

wouldnt they both be the same

a backup is a backup, if you got the grunt to do on the fly and it completes successfully then it should be the same.

[Krazykevin]

I would have to agree with Sifaga. I'm new to the DVD world but this used to come up all the time when burning CDR. I know DVD burning is a lot more data and might take some more umph from your computer, but isn't that what the buffer is for on your burner? I'm just asking. But it seems to me if the burn completed then you should have an exact copy, either way. The only benefit I see is that if your computer can't handle the stress, than yeah the hard drive to disk may be safer, but if it can handle it, it would be the same.

[lordsmurf]

I do 4x on-the-fly just fine.

[richdvd]

I do 4x on-the-fly just fine.

ditto......all the time.