Mounting and formatting DVD-RAM

dude67 · December 16, 2007

I recently got some DVD-RAMs to make back-ups of my photos currently stored on my HDs. I did a little googling but was unable to find anything that would help... The closest one I found was these threads, but the info dind't help me.

https://mandrivausers.org/index.php?showtopic=2184

http://forum.mandriva.com/viewtopic.php?t=...b10b67e77fad4e4

What's the easiest way of formating (and to which filesystem?) a DVD-RAM? And I guess then it should be mounted afterwards.

Additional question: is there a way to format a DVD-RAM so that it would work on windows?

ianw1974 · December 16, 2007

From what I know, I always believed normal shared-usage would be UDF formatted, or even you could choose other filesystems:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD-RAM

gives an insight into what filesystems you can use on it, and which ones would work better than others.

dude67 · December 17, 2007

OK, thanks Ian. With the UDF, is there still the problem with the size limitation of 1 GB mentioned in one of the two threads?

But my main problem actually is that I don't know how to go about formating the DVD-RAM disk! I tried doing as suggested in this post by counterspy, but couldn't do it (or didn't know how to proceed with it). It said something about the target (the sr0 or the cdrom) not beeing a file system but a device and if I wanted to continue. I said yes but still was unable to mount it after that. I'm guessing I didn't do it correctly.

So how would you format a new out-of-the-box DVD-RAM?

ianw1974 · December 17, 2007

I'm unsure. I do have a DVD-RAM - the one and only disk I have and never used or attempted to use it. I've always used standard CD's/DVD's. However:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_systems

according to this link - UDF has a max file size of 16EiB. And this link:

http://www.geocities.com/dtmcbride/tech/file_system.html

recommends for use larger than 32GB for flash media. So I reckon it should be OK. Maybe you need a package called udftools:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/li...ram-udf-351800/

according to this link sometimes the disks are already pre-formatted. There is also a complaint in here that when Linux writes to UDF, Windows cannot read it. But it's a standard, so it should be OK. See how you go. If not, you can always use an alternative filesystem type instead to share between the two if need be.

dude67 · December 17, 2007

Thanks again, Ian. I'll try to work on this when I get home.

What is the command for formating a DVD for UDF? I guess this would be used for ext2 (or is there another/better way of doing it?):

/sbin/mke2fs /dev/sr0

ianw1974 · December 17, 2007

Yep, that would do an ext2 filesystem on the device mentioned. This link:

http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/view/...a/udftools.html

gives info on how to format the disk for UDF.

I love google, I learnt a bit on UDF now in case I decide to use it :)

dude67 · December 17, 2007

I love google, I learnt a bit on UDF now in case I decide to use it :)

I love google as well, but sometimes I cannot see the forest from the trees! And sometimes it's just that I don't understand what's relevant and what's not. (At least according to my wife... :D )

I tried to find the info googling, but ... I'll try harder next time. Thanks Ian! I will definitely check that link when I get home. :thumbs:

ianw1974 · December 17, 2007

Yeah, I also have the same problem of trying to find the mines in the minefield. Sometimes I'm lucky, I guess it just depends on how I put the keywords in for the search :)

Hope it all works out and doesn't prove to be useless info.

dude67 · December 17, 2007

I installed UDFtools through MCC, but now I get this...

				 [root@localhost dev]# mkudffs sr0
			 trying to change type of multiple extents
		 [root@localhost dev]# mkudffs /media/cdrom
			 trying to change type of multiple extents
		   [root@localhost dev]# /usr/bin/mkudffs /dev/sr0
			 trying to change type of multiple extents
			 [root@localhost dev]# /usr/bin/mkudffs /media/cdrom
			 trying to change type of multiple extents
		   [root@localhost dev]# mkudffs /dev/sr0
			 trying to change type of multiple extents
			 [root@localhost dev]# mkudffs /media/cdrom
			 trying to change type of multiple extents
			 [root@localhost dev]# mount /dev/sr0
			 mount: can't find /dev/sr0 in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab
			 [root@localhost dev]# mount /media/cdrom
			 mount: you must specify the filesystem type

What's going on... I then googled this "trying to change type of multiple extents" and came up with instruction to format the DVD anew.

I did so:

# dvd+rw-format  -force=full /dev/dvd

It ran a fair while. But even though it seemed to format the whole DVD-RAM disk, this is (again) what I got:

[root@localhost dude67]# mkudffs /media/cdrom
	   trying to change type of multiple extents
	   [root@localhost dude67]# mkudffs /dev/sr0
	   trying to change type of multiple extents
	   [root@localhost dude67]# mkudffs /dev/dvd
	   trying to change type of multiple extents
	   [root@localhost dude67]#

Then this is my /etc/fstab

/dev/sda6 / ext3 noatime 1 1
	 /dev/sda8 /home ext3 noatime 1 2
	 /dev/cdrom /media/cdrom auto umask=0,users,iocharset=utf8,noauto,exec 0 0
	 /dev/sda1 /mnt/win_c ntfs-3g defaults,locale=en_US.UTF-8 0 0
	 /dev/sda5 /mnt/win_d ntfs-3g defaults,locale=en_US.UTF-8 0 0
	 none /proc proc defaults 0 0
	 none /tmp tmpfs defaults 0 0
	 /dev/sda9 /usr ext3 noatime 1 2
	 /dev/sda7 swap swap defaults 0 0

I cannot figure it out...

ianw1974 · December 17, 2007

I think you might need to do this first to prepare the disk from the link I gave before:

cdrwtool -d /dev/scd0 -q

then the command you were using after that I think. I don't have a disk to try it.

dude67 · December 17, 2007

OK. I gave it a go:

[root@localhost ~]# cdrwtool -d /dev/scd0 -q
   using device /dev/scd0
   open cdrom device: No such file or directory

So I thought: OK, perhaps the scd0 is wrong... And I go:

[root@localhost ~]# cdrwtool -d /dev/sr0 -q
   using device /dev/sr0
   wait_cmd: Input/output error
   Command failed: 5c 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 0c 00 00 00 - sense 05.30.02

...and...

[root@localhost ~]# cdrwtool -d /dev/cdrom -q
   using device /dev/cdrom
   wait_cmd: Input/output error
   Command failed: 5c 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 0c 00 00 00 - sense 05.30.02

...and...

[root@localhost ~]# cdrwtool -d /media/cdrom -q
   using device /media/cdrom
   set_options
   can't unlock door
   [root@localhost ~]#

Nothing seems to work.

pindakoe · December 17, 2007

Haven't used DVD-RAM, but have used CD-RW using udftools My approach after lots of trial an error is the following:

Install udftools. This provides cdrwtool to format media with udf file-system, pktsetup to define a packet-writing device (overlaid on the block device that your CDRW normally is) and an init-script to automatically run pktsetup at boot time.
Define a name for the packet device and link it to a block device in /etc/sysconfig/pktcdvd. My file says cdrw /dev/hdc as my CD burner is master on the second IDE channel; you can select whatever name you fancy (?).
Create a packet device on top of said block device with following commands; this step only needs to be done (the initscript will take care of doing this when needed during reboots):
```
pktsetup cdrw /dev/hdc 
chmod a+rw /dev/pktcdvd/cdrw
```
Prepare the disk with the UDF file-system: cdrwtool -d /dev/hdc -q. This can only be done when the disc is notmounted. Some software will try to mount it, so you may need to unmount it before formatting

Edited December 17, 2007 by pindakoe

dude67 · December 18, 2007

Pindakoe, thanks for your tips. Let's see what I got.

1. I have installed udftools as I said earlier. That I think covers point 1.

2. I did that with the following changes: in /etc/sysconfig/pktcdvd I wrote dvd /dev/hdc (I was contemplating on writing dvd /dev/sr0)

3. Then I went and run

[root@localhost dev]# pktsetup dvd /dev/sr0
			 [root@localhost dev]# chmod a+rw /dev/pktcdvd/dvd

4. And then it failed on this one

[root@localhost dev]# cdrwtool -d /dev/sr0 -q
		 using device /dev/sr0
		 wait_cmd: Input/output error
		 Command failed: 5c 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 0c 00 00 00 - sense 05.30.02
		 [root@localhost dev]#

The DVD is not mounted as it tries to do that every time I insert the disk, but it says it fails.

Any thoughts?

pindakoe · December 18, 2007

I have had these (or somewhat similar errors) as well, but this is one upgrade and a fresh install ago so don't know how I solved it then. I checked some of my old links (as I only ever tested CDRW which may not be identical to DVD-RAM) and cam across this in the Gentoo WIki, which mentions (1) not to use cdwrtool (only for CDRW), but mkudffs instead. If that gives trying to change type of multiple extents it suggests not using mkudffs but dvd+rw-format /dev/hdc instead. I guess you have not yet tried to do this (especially after doing up the pktsetup thing). Just an idea..

deliberate · December 18, 2007

I wanted to use DVDram disk for a long time. Every time I try to format the disk I get the message that I have no permission to write on the disk. I did to change in fstab with rw all users but still getting the same.

Mounting and formatting DVD-RAM

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