Steve Scrimpshire Posted April 22, 2003 Report Share Posted April 22, 2003 I'm looking at, but not sure if this DVD writer will work with Linux. It does not say so on the box and I can find no info searching Google. Here it is: http://shopper.cnet.com/shopping/resellers...20840921-0.html Does anyone have this drive working in Linux? TIA Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyme Posted April 22, 2003 Report Share Posted April 22, 2003 there aren't many cd-writers that don't work in linux. that being said, i can't tell you that yes this one does work. just that i haven't really heard stories of any that _didn't_ work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Scrimpshire Posted April 22, 2003 Author Report Share Posted April 22, 2003 Well, I haven't heard of any DVD Writers that work in Linux in that capacity and that is why I asked. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyme Posted April 22, 2003 Report Share Posted April 22, 2003 Well, I haven't heard of any DVD Writers that work in Linux in that capacity and that is why I asked. ah! I can't read..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Scrimpshire Posted April 23, 2003 Author Report Share Posted April 23, 2003 I would love to know if anyone has this writer working in Linux. Now, I'm not so much interested in actually making dvd movies or whatever, but in the storage capacity for DVD vs CD for storing data. This looks like a really good writer and supports DVD+/-R and +/-RW Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DragonMage Posted April 23, 2003 Report Share Posted April 23, 2003 Hmmm.. I am not really sure about the hardware support of that particular DVD=Writer in linux, but it seems that at least linux has support for writing it, since there is a program called dvd+rw-tools in the mandrake cds. According to this link though http://fy.chalmers.se/~appro/linux/DVD+RW/ you may have to patch your kernel for DVD+RW support or something (maybe mandrake already has that patch in their kernel). The site does mention Sony DRU-500 though so that particular writer may be supported. Anyway.. just go to the link, I think the information over there will help you greatly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Scrimpshire Posted April 23, 2003 Author Report Share Posted April 23, 2003 Yes, it does help greatly. Thx. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Scrimpshire Posted April 24, 2003 Author Report Share Posted April 24, 2003 Ok, so I went and bought this drive and Linux recongnizes it as /dev/hdd, so I added hdd=ide-scsi to my append line in lilo. I also downloaded the dvd-writer tools pointed to on that site and cdrtools to get mkisofs. As we speak, I'm backing up my /mnt/win_c partition to see if it works. The one thing I don't really comprehend is what they mean by this: # Unlike DVD+RW, DVD+R media does have notion of multiple sessions. However! DVD-ROM drives can only "see" the first one. DVD+R burners will be the only ones capable to access the files added at different occasions. # Even though DVD+R unit does "sense" multiple sessions, Linux sometimes fails to pull that information from the drive:-( Till the problem is looked into and resolved you can work it around by reloading driver with 'rmmod sr_mod'. Does this mean that I have to combine everything I want to back up into one directory and copy it all at once or does that only mean a session is equal to recording then opening the drawer? That's a little confusing to me. Also, it didn't automatically create an entry in /etc/fstab for my writer. I'm going to try to create one for it that looks just like my dvd-rom: /dev/hdc /mnt/cdrom auto user,iocharset=iso8859-1,umask=0,exec,codepage=850,ro,noauto 0 0 Using ISO9660 instead of iso8859-1 Also, I just read one of the FAQs there that confuses me even more about this 'multiple session' thing: Q. What are the dvd+rw-tools for? A. As already implied/mentioned to master the DVD+RW/+R media with:-) I could simply refer you to the tutorial, but figured that couple of words about the [original] design ideas behind growisofs, the principal burning utility, wouldn't harm. Even though modified kernel can let you put for example an ext2 file system on DVD+RW, it's probably not very practical, because you most likely want to access the data on arbitrary computer. Or in other words you most likely want ISO9660. Trouble is that you might as well want to add data now and then. And what options do you have in the lack of multiple sessions (yes, DVD+RW has no notion of multiple sessions)? Complete re-mastering which takes more and more time as data-set grows? Well, yes, unless you employ growisofs! growisofs provides the way to both lay down and grow an ISO9660 file system on (as well as to burn an arbitrary pre-mastered image to) both DVD+RW and DVD+R media. Emphasis mine. While I'm burning this, my output of free: [root@localhost tmp]# free total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 386408 382004 4404 0 12256 229088 -/+ buffers/cache: 140660 245748 Swap: 401584 10864 390720 and my system is annoyingly slow. Is this normal? Sorry for all the questions. ;-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Scrimpshire Posted April 24, 2003 Author Report Share Posted April 24, 2003 Bummer. The writing worked great and can be read by the burner, but my other DVD ROM can't read it. I've tried Win2K, WinXP and Linux and it is unreadable in all of them through that drive. I used a DVD+RW disk. I'll have to check the specs on my original DVD ROM (a NEC DV-5700A). I guess it's not that big of a deal for backups unless my burner dies. This is what I get in Linux trying to mount it on the older DVD Rom: [root@localhost omar]# mount /dev/hdc /mnt/cdrom /dev/hdc: Input/output error mount: block device /dev/hdc is write-protected, mounting read-only /dev/hdc: Input/output error mount: you must specify the filesystem type I've tried it with the original iocharset that fstab had and changing it to iso9660...same error both times. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyme Posted April 24, 2003 Report Share Posted April 24, 2003 some (older) dvd readers can't read the + technology, on the - stuff. This was explained to my dad when he got a DVD burner (which I haven't had the chance to make use of...yet!). I believe it has to do with some form of encoding or the way the disk is written. I'm not positive though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Scrimpshire Posted April 24, 2003 Author Report Share Posted April 24, 2003 Now I'm thinking I shoulda bought my fiancee that CD Burner/DVD ROM combo drive instead of just a CD burner. LOL. Thanks, tyme. So that means if I use a DVD-RW or a DVD-R, it'll prolly be readable in the older drive? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyme Posted April 24, 2003 Report Share Posted April 24, 2003 I believe so. no harm in trying, right? well..accept a little lost money..but I believe it should work, yes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Scrimpshire Posted April 24, 2003 Author Report Share Posted April 24, 2003 Thanks again, tyme. I want to note for the record for others reading, that I did, in fact, try dvd+rw-format -lead-out /dev/hdd as suggested by that site and still the older drive cannot read it (it's about 2-1/2 years old). Now if someone else could answer my other questions about multiple sessions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Scrimpshire Posted April 24, 2003 Author Report Share Posted April 24, 2003 Hmmmm...according to this: http://www.dvdplusrw.org/resources/compati...ist_dvdrom.html The NEC DV-5700A is supposed to be able to read DVD+RW and DVD+R. I wonder if I updated the firmware, if that would help? The firmware update only mentions that it helps with something about burning with Adaptec on the fly. I guess it wouldn't hurt to boot over into Windows and try it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Scrimpshire Posted April 24, 2003 Author Report Share Posted April 24, 2003 Ok, I tried updating the firmware, but that was a no-go. Didn't think it would work, since it was released in 12/00. I discovered if I try to mount it in a virtual terminal I get much more detailed error messages: hdc: cdrom_decode_status: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error } hdc: cdrom_decode_status: status=0x34 [the combination of those two lines is repeated two more times] hdc: ATAPI reset complete [all the above lines are repeated once more] end_request: I/O error, dev 16:00 (hdc), sector 0 /dev/hdc: Input/output error [all of the above repeats, except the second to last line becomes <yadayada>, sector 4] This repeats indefinitely until I hit control-c. If I stop it right after it says the error about sector 0, it says: FAT: unable to read boot sector (I'm assuming that is because I copied a whole Windows partition) Now to try to burn a whole different directory system and see if I still get the errors and then I'll know for sure that it is a +RW incompatibility. (Note, it doesn't loop indefinitely or give me the FAT error if just trying to mount in a console window (as opposed to a virtual console), it just gives me this: [root@localhost omar]# mount /dev/hdc /mnt/cdrom /dev/hdc: Input/output error mount: block device /dev/hdc is write-protected, mounting read-only /dev/hdc: Input/output error mount: you must specify the filesystem type and stops. Now, I'm pretty sure that tyme is correct as to why this is, but I just wanted to put my thoughts and experimental data here for others to read in case they come across the same problem. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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