Burning DVD-R's

[Marc Wiz]

On Mon, Dec 29, 2003 at 05:31:21PM -0500, Charles Swiger wrote:
> On Dec 29, 2003, at 4:18 PM, Brett Glass wrote:
> >At 01:42 PM 12/29/2003, Charles Swiger wrote:
> >>Yes, FreeBSD can burn DVD-R's.  Please see 
> >>/usr/ports/sysutils/dvd+rw-tools.
> >
> >I've taken a look at this port. Unfortunately, it's REALLY hard to
> >figure out the documentation (which consists of a few Web pages written
> >in very contorted -- almost unreadable -- English).
> 
> The man page for growisofs is the primary documentation; it's not a 
> gem, but neither does it strike me as being far less understandable 
> than "man burncd", "man mkisofs", or other documentation related to 
> this topic.

I agree (for whatever that is worth :-)

> 
> >From what I can tell, though, this software is really meant to work
> >with DVD+R, which records a little more than half as fast as DVD-R.
> >I need the speed, and so need to make sure it really works with DVD-R.
> 
> Meaning what?  You want to make sure the software really works with 
> DVD-R, but you are not willing to test the software yourself?  Hmm...

Well I tried it and it does work with DVD-RW :-)  And while the 
documentation could use some improvement it does state you can
use DVD-R.

> 
> >Also, it looks as if this port runs on top of another utility called
> >"cdrecord", which itself runs on top of an ATAPI-to-SCSI shim.
> 
> dvd+rw-tools depends on mkisofs (aka sysutils/cdrtools).
> For ATAPI burner devices, it will use ATAPI/CAM.

I use the "shim" with no problems at all.

> 
> >I'm worried that this ziggurat of utilities will not be anywhere near
> >as reliable as a simple utility that goes directly to the ATAPI drive.

Well that all depends on your philosophy regarding tools.

> 
> Your concern could be resolved by verifying the data after you burn it 
> to DVD, which, come to think of it, is a really fine idea when using 
> any type of backup or archival mechanism.

An excellent suggestion.  I'm paranoid when doing my backups.  After I
do them I do a restore -N.  If you want to be really check things do
an actual restore to a different location and do md5sum's to compare
the files.

Marc

-- 
Marc Wiz
marc at wiz.com
Yes, that really is my last name.