Problem when "copying on the fly"

Newbie Forum
#1

Hi Peeps… noob on here, thought I could steal some knowledge from some of you. :wink:

Just got the NEC ND-4500A (master) and also have an MSI Combo MS-8452M (Slave).

When I try and copy on the fly with Nero 6, 1click DVD copy or DVD Clone the software shows my NEC as a CD-RW. Its fine when the Blank DVD-R or DVD+R is in the NEC drive its shows the destination drive as “NEC 4550A DVD” then when I put the disc I’d like to copy in the MSI drive and close the drawer its changes the destination drive to “NEC 4550A CD/RW”.

I’ve formatted my system drive and re-installed Windows XP Home (was time for a format anyway) and I’m still having the same problem. I can copy fine if I write to an image file which would suggest a problem with the MSI Combo drive…

Any Suggestions? I suppose replacing the Combo with another DVD-ROM would be logical? I’ve tried putting the NEC on its own IDE channel and slaving the Combo to HDD and vice versa… with the same result.

Help! Its starting to give me piles now :slight_smile:

#2

Does that fact that it SHOWS at a cdrw stop it from working? Have you tried to make it copy anyway to see what happens? If it won’t work, try going into device manager, and uninstall both ide’s, and reboot. Allow windows to autodetect the devices and drivers. See if that helps.

#3

this is kind of what I think harley was getting at, but I’ll elaborate a little. If you are looking at the drive in my computer, windows will try to guess what kind of disk it is and put that label next to the drive icon. It does a pretty crappy job. It is not abnormal for it to call it a cd drive when their is a dvd in it etc. It may not be able to tell what the disk is either. For instance, if you do properties on a blank dvd it usally shows capacity of zero (not ??? free capacity like a flash drive/hard drive etc.). Its probably because their is no formating on a blank disk. You can pretty much ignore anything strange you see in my computer. try useing burning/playing software (depending on what you are trying to do of course), and see if they recognise and use the drive/disk properlly. If they do, your drive is fine.

#4

I’ve tried copying a copy of a movie and it ejects the drawer and asks for a DVD… I’ll try uninstalling the IDE’s and see if that helps.

#5

Just a thought. Try copying from the msi drive to the nec drive, but not on the fly (in nero 6.6, uncheck quick copy, there should be a similar option if it is a diffrent version). I’m not sure about the other two programs, but nero will sometimes refuse to burn if it detects a possible problem (even though the disk is readable). An example would be if nero (or other programs) only detect that the reading drive can read at 6x and you are trying to burn at 8x. Other things that can cause an issue (though this doesn’t sound like your problem) is if the target disk cannot fit the content of the first disk onto the second disk. If you are doing a direct copy (copy dvd option in nero) and it will not fit. Diffrent single layer formats have slightly diffrent capacities which can cause this problem. Same thing goes for recording from dual layer to dual layer.
If you are using a program that compresses (like nero recode, the copy entire dvd-video option), to copy a dual layer movie to a single layer disk, it might not be able to compress the movie far enough to fit.
Trying to copy a diffrent dvd, and or copying from the msi to the nec, but not on the fly might help expose if it is one of these issues.
Fyi, just my personal opinion here, but I wouldn’t be copying dvd’s on the fly on a regular basis (especially with faster burning speeds). You are moving quite a bit of data at a very fast rate. It doesn’t take much to mess up a burn. Even if the burn doesn’t fail, if it forces the burning drive to downshift burning speed, you may get a bad spot in the burn (high errors or even a failed burn). All it takes is one little hard to read spot on a disk or a little scratch to cause problems.

#6

You should not copy a DVD movie on the Fly, as that is the best way to get Errors…
Use DVD Decryptor n Shrink or whatever takes your fancy!

#7

Replaced the MSI Combo with a Sony DVD-ROM… Problems sorted, the MSI was reading DVD’s as CD’s, time for retirement for that one.

Cheers for all the advice though, much appreciated.