Why does it say "Process completed successfully" and the disc won't play???

[signals]

Your drive is in PIO mode, which can hamper communication between the drive and the burning engine. Reset the drive to DMA transfer mode and try again. Neither of these brands are considered high quality blank media.

[90312]

In addition to signals advice I would set the write speed to 2.4 rather than 4X with that media.

[signals]

Good point, I agree.

[maxrnb]

It tends to be use DVDFAB that causes the switch from DMA to PIO, in my experience - that is not an indictment of DVDFAB, more of the copying process! I changed the registry entries for the secondary IDE channel - both DVD drives are connected to this, and the drives went back to DMA after reboot. Writing at 2.4x does not 'save' the TDK media - I only burned 1 DVD, and it will not play back.

The Maxell media are clearly better - they do play back, burned at 4x.

What are considered good media for DVDFAB backups? I know the burning software, hardware, dye play a role, and the supply chains, even for so called when known brands can meander a lot, so it is hard to generalise. I used Verbatim for a long time, then last fall the guys in our test and repair facility (fix everything from a z10 super mainframe to a printer cartridge replacement and everything in between!), who analyse all the blank media they use, said they were getting consecutive poor batches (talking about UK now) and they were best avoided right now. They swore by them before, but I am happy to take that revised advice, as there is no way of knowing exactly what you are getting batch wise in a shop, or online, until they arrive and the seal is broken, and you are stuck with at least that pack.

My other choice, Sony, are harder to find right now. TDK are clearly best avoided, based on the above!

Thanks to those involved for the good feedback I have been getting today.

Amanda

[maineman]

Hi Amanda,

Generally, we recommend Taiyo Yuden and Verbatim media.
You won't go wrong with TY...the best blank media on the planet...JMO
For most users, they are available online only.

Verbs are usually found in many brick & mortar stores as well as online.
I can't speak to specific problems in the UK and I have read about some quality issues, but I don't know that we've seen this here in the states.
Most users have great success with Verbatim

I use YUDEN000 T02 (+R, 8X) almost exclusively and have never had a problem with this media.
I'm able to purchase them here in the US for about $0.28-0.30 a piece with free shipping thrown in...pretty good deal.

Sony makes some good media, but they can be a bit more finicky, depending upon the hardware.

Sorry, I can't point you to a specific vendor on your side of the pond.
Hopefully, someone you know or someone here will pop on and help you out

[90312]

Amanda,
When a UDMA drive encounters six DMA data transfer timeouts or six I/O errors (CRC) the drive will revert to PIO mode regardless of the software being used. Playing heavily scratched CD or DVDs in the optical drive can cause it. I can’t prove but firmly believe that just playing a movie with bad sector protection schema or bad pressings can cause a drive to roll back in certain cases. Computer optical drives are just not as forgiving as a set top player.

[maineman]

Solid advice as always from 90312.
Occasionally, resetting the DMA doesn't "stick" well, but unless you are ripping beat-up discs repeatedly,
I don't know why you'd keep falling into PIO.

You may want to run a registry patch.
Please take a look at my sticky thread:



and scroll down to #7 to find VBS Script file

[maxrnb]

90312 - I share that view, that it is not just disks with physical issues that cause the CRC checks on DVD drives, and then the ridiculous '6 and you are out' historical imposition by Microsoft kicks in. It should always have been readily tweakable by the end user - I can trace my PC use back to being a beta tester for the original IBM PC, and in my experience, even the very earliest hard drives were never unreliable enough to warrant a permanent, unseen to most end users, switch to a mode that can severely impact performance, and cause other knock on problems. On the contrary, the full height drives back then were in fact over engineered, which more than compensated for them lacking later technological refinements.

We all see spelling mistakes on DVD media labels, I suspect that some of these oversights may involve less than optimum copy protection strategies. There have been some prominent cases of where things have gone badly wrong in this area. Mispressings can happen as well - the Jim Capaldi memorial concert DVD is a classic example. I went to the concert, and received the DVD the same day. It stuck for a few seconds on one of the Joe Walsh tracks, and then stuttered over the next 15 seconds. Internet postings revealed others had exactly the same problems - a quick examination showed that there was an issue with the way the pits had been pressed. The DVD was withdrawn, and replaced - the company involved sent my copy directly to me. When a drive encounters these less usual conditions, and tries to copy, probably with retries becoming involved, then CRC issues can potentially start clocking up - things are literally not adding up any more.

I look after the DVD's we use, and invariably back them up when they are new, right out of the case. (What happens to them after that, when the family gets hold of them can of course a variable, but the disks and players are in good condition). Point is, I do not copy disks that are damaged, but over time, the drives do slip back into PIO mode.

If we also factor in the issues that others are seeing within the actual Backup process - sometimes the copy fails in literally one second, (see the logs I have posted), sometimes is takes a few minutes. When the process appears not to know the copy protection mechanism for a given disk, strange things appear to happen, that can permeate through to the hardware level. Those who have looked at a disk diagnostic trace from midrange or mainframes will be well aware of the potential for such interactivity, on PC client or servers, the tendency is that the hardware is relatively cheap, and/or of smaller scale, and hence not worth analysing, so it is just replaced.

I have only seen <any> of those issues personally within the last 12 months. What I do find surprising is that the people that use DVDFAB far more than I do are not getting some of the outright failures to split or clone, there are other some reports appearing, maybe I was very unlucky with getting 6 out of 6 failures to split. Are people then reverting to Movie Only and being content with that? If you could get 100% quality every time, and had the ability to span more than one disk, I could see that being a popular option for many, in any event.

Amanda