I've just lost two DVD rewritables one +RW and one -RW. It seems that DVD writing is mostly unreliable and using these formats ensure incompatibility in one way or the other.

I first wrote a DVD+RW disk for my data backup. Unfortunately the data was corrupted when I tried to read it (files were junked up). Then I wanted to rewrite over the disk (since you don't need to format them again. It refused. I tried reformatting and even forcing reformatting the media, but the drive just ejected the disks without doing anything...

I am neither able to format them nor rewrite over them now. Can anybody suggest ways to recover these bad media? I've not had a single problem in writing CD-Rs or RWs all these years. And now I've had more trouble with the various DVD formats than any other... each OEM seems to have their own levels of reliability which sometimes work with one writer and sometimes doesn't.

Why don't they have one bloody standard? And if they can make one proper CD-RW format, why the hell can't them make one proper DVD RW format?

Hello,

Your media are maybe not lost. I had such strange issues with a DVD+RW myself: I could not re-write it after failing the first write.
I don't remember how I solved the issue, but I remember it involved forcing something (the formatting process, probably), after having extensively read the whole documentation of the "dvd+rwtools" (or something like that) package; it's a long and very informative historic and technical read.
Then I used tkdvd to do a proper working re-write (not very good interface but works...).

I hope this helps. Good luck.

Yves.

was it FORCE ASPI? ?......
although i dont use have DVDrws .. i have quiet an some experiences with cd-rws and they are quite reliable (considering in my country the cd-quality is very pathetic and low-class) when I bought my new p4 , all worked fine except that my Combo would not work well when in winxp and combo in secondry master/slave
i was searching and there was a thing abt FORCE ASPI
i never tried coz changing cable worked it .....but the name stuck in fragmants of my memory

No it wasn't that. There was no acronym in it. DVDs are complex media, that need to BOTH be formatted AND be blanked before being writable... I had to force one of those two things, using dvd+rwtools on the command line, IIRC.

Yves.

There seems to be no man page for dvd+rw-tools on my Slackware
When I issue this command:
That's the only help I've got so far. Anyway I'll try the online documentation. By the way when I was doing an unrelated search I came across a few interesting articles on the politics of DVD formats, including the cdrtools proDVD issue in some mailing list archives

then i am sorry can only say next time try buringi @ slower speeds.... nothing else it snot my experties

I burned at the only supported speed for that media which was 4x (in DVD terms). Actually, the problem lies elsewhere. I noticed that the first write was corrupted and many of the files had junk in them instead of the actual text, so maybe that corruption has something to do with the fact that I cannot erase or rewrite the media.

Actually, the same people who devised the DVD-R format are the ones responsible for CD-R, while +R is from a different group, the DVD+RW Alliance... see these two links below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD-R
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD%2BR

Anyways, I also myself had issues with +R discs, I don't have a DVD burner, but I have had data DVDs given to me from friends that used +R discs, and my drive had issues reading it, even my dvdplayer (settop). For example, MP3s would either not play, or some how would be combined with a different mp3 even though they were seperate files on the disc. Also, copying was a pain resulting in corrupt data or unreadable data. So I would have to agree, +R discs are crap. I would just stick with -R discs, and as for RWs, I never had any use for them, even CD-RWs,

Another note, dual layered +R discs are out, but also they are not reliable, since I had a movie burned on a +R DL disc, and it was unreadable, and it still seems that there are not any -R DL discs yet, however Verbatim seems to be the only company that I have seen that offers such discs, but only at their website, I have not seen any stores that carry Dual Layered -R discs. See this link also:

http://www.verbatim.com/products/pro...13397B6B0D1E0F

[edit]

Another note. If you think the different standards are annoying now, just wait, since HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are out now, and also Verbatim is offering HD-DVD-R and BD-R media... Thus fanning the flames of format insanity!

Indeed, there's no man page, but there are doc files (HTML IIRC). For finding them, do whatever is the equivalent in your distribution of: rpm -ql dvd+rwtools

Yves.

I am having this same exact issue and would just like to subscribe to this thread so I keep tabs on any updates. So with these DVD+RW discs that I have, I dont need to erase them, I can just burn over top of the other files? How does the burner no when to overwrite the old files, is it only when it gets full?

ugh.. stupid konqueror access keys popping up while I'm typing, deeply sorry for the double-post.

my experience has been the opposite, I've never had a problem with a +R disc, single or dual layer, and with some drive firmware tricks and bitsetting, I've been able to get my old, picky settop player to play dvds I've burned, dvd-r cannot do this, parts of the disc that need to be modified are pressed onto the disc before you get to burn it.

in my experience dvd+R has always been a better format, I'm surprised that you've had such problems.

CDs can go the way of the floppy. Jumpdrives! That is is the solutions to all you guys problems. I can't remember the last time I had to replace a jumpdrive because it got scratched or the player didn't support +,- format.

Everything should be on jump drives. Flash memory. Movies. Music. Files.

CDs are obselete.

In fact I think we should have gigabit ethernet connections. Eliminating even the need for jump drives. But I would settle for jump drives for a while. Since its a step in the right direction.