[Yobar]

With the Sonic I burned files on DVD-R's and had no worries reading them in either of my DVD drives. After the update,some of those DVD-R's are unreadable. These are discs I filled, closed, and "made compatible" with Sonic DLA. The drive runs and runs on for minutes, then a box pops up saying the DLA needs to mount the disc due to the disc being ejected before burn completion, or something like that. I have to paperclip the disc out of the drive, then CTRL+ALT+DEL to bring up the task manager just so I can reboot. Also, it seems the Roxio prefers the DVD-RW's.

WinXP SP2
Roxio DLA 5.2.0
Philips DVD+-RW DVD8631 (firmware GD30)

Please, help! I've got about 13 GB worth of files I need to recover.

[lynn98109]

You now have first-hand experience of why Packet-Writing (Sonic's DLA, Roxio's Drag2Disc, Nero's InCD, etc) is the best possible way to permantly LOSE the data.

Packet-Writing was developed in the days of floppy-discs for short-term storage of major projects, such as web-pages. Those who know what it is do not fall into the trap of using it for permant archiving. Different Packet-Writing programs are not compatible with each other, and often not with different Versions of the same program. Packet-Writing tends to be fussy about being read, and can fail for any reason or none at all.

To make it even easier to lose data with Packet-Writing (not to mention Zip discs and Zip drives) WinXP figures it can write things when it gets around to it, which is usually just before it ejects a disc. Then people force the disc out and lose everything on it. (And it damages Zip drives while it's at it.)

At this point, you might be able to use a recovery program, such as cdroller (www.cdroller.com) or ISOBuster (www.isobuster.com) - both have impressive testimonials on their websites and in the Roxio Forums. Both have a "trial" version that lets you see if anything is recoverable before you hve to pay.

Since you used R media, the odds are far better than with RW media.

For clarification about media - there are three kinds:

• Commercially pressed media, which have the pits and lands physically pressed into the metal
  
• R media, which has a dye "cooked" by the laser to create the pits and lands that are the magnetic equivalent of 0's and 1's
  
• RW media, which has an aluminum alloy melted and re-crystalized to create the pits and lands. The alloy can be re-heated to wipe out the pits and lands and make it re-usable (ie, it can be erased). It tends to be unstable, meaning data can disappear. It also has a finate number of times that it can be erased.

So you've used one of the 3 best methods to lose data - Packet-Writing. You are considering using another - RW media. If you get Memorex, you can pretty much plan on losing everything.

So, try the recovery programs and let us know how it goes.

If you recover anything, use a Sessions-based program (Creator Classic in Roxio, Sonic's Data Disc, or WinXP's built-in burning) to save it to R media - assuming you want to keep it long-term. I'd also suggest making more than one copy, and storing them separately.

Lynn

This post has been edited by lynn98109: 04 November 2007 - 03:13 AM

[Yobar]

You now have first-hand experience of why Packet-Writing (Sonic's DLA, Roxio's Drag2Disc, Nero's InCD, etc) is the best possible way to permantly LOSE the data.

Thanks for the reply, Lynn. Why do they bother putting out crap like this, then? Is there any company we can trust these days to not bullshit us?

[lynn98109]

They put out Packet-Writing programs because

• Some people know how to use them correctly
• Some people don't know how to use them but believe they do (I fell into that catgory)

FWIW, EMC 10 does not have Drag2Disc (or any other Packet-Writing program), nor does the lastest Version of Nero have InCD.

However, Vista has Packet-Writing 2.0 - which I have no plans to try.

Lynn

[Yobar]

They put out Packet-Writing programs because

• Some people know how to use them correctly
• Some people don't know how to use them but believe they do (I fell into that catgory)

Me, too. I knew DLA was too good to be true. I wish the literature had a big warning in it stating NOT FOR ARCHIVING!

I checked out the CDRoller. It was able to see data on one disc. The others weren't even recognized by either of my DVD drives. I wish these people would all get on the same page. I wonder why WinXP has native CD burning, but not DVD. Guess they needed people to upgrade.

I'm experimenting with the Sonic Data Disc that came with my comp. Thanks again.