Copying From one DVD drive directly to another, Good/Bad Idea?

I have a freebie DVD drive I got from a friend, it won't burn dvd's unless they are 4x, (firmware update didn't help), but it will read DVD's just fine at 12x.


Say I had a burned DVD, ready to copy to another DVD, no decrypting/shrinking/etc, just want to copy one DVD R to another DVD R.

Could I directly copy the data from the drive that reads at 12x to my good drive that burns at 8x (can go higher, but that's the speed of my dics).

Or would this still use the HD? It takes about 13mins to use my one drive to copy the date to the HD, then burn it to a blank DVD. Would using the two drives cut that time in half?

Keep in mind I have a very powerful system and 2gigs of ram, and wouldn't be doing anything during the burn. I have Nero 6 burning software BTW.


Any ideas?

It'll still create a temporary file. The extra drive won't save you half the time, it'll only save you from having to remove the original and then insert the blank.

I copy non copy protected DVD's from a DVD read only drive to my DVD writer with no problems. Give it a try, blank DVD's are cheap now.

IsaacHayes,

As long as your drive is fast enough, you are able to do a direct copy without caching to a hard drive. It won't half the time needed as your drive can probably read faster than your other can write, unless you have a very fast writer.

Trashman: temporary file as in for a buffer or it copies the whole shebang before it fires up the 2nd drive to burn?

Beamhead: Yup, I got 50 8x DVD-R for $8. Can't beat that!! (years ago I got 100 48x 700mb CDR for $6, still using em!) I'm just waiting for Dual layer to come down in price. Then we'll be cooking!

winny: My writer is 16x. But my discs are 8x, but still I would imagine if it does work, then it would cut the time down even reading/burning at 8x vs read 16x, write to HD, then read from HD, burn at 8x. But maybe not? I'd test but I hate opening up my PC to slap another drive in there. Good thing I have a SATA HD because if I add this DVD "reader" then my IDE will be out of channels!!

I may put the drive in a second computer that faces a couch so I can watch DVD's in that room if I wanted to.... But if it will make burns faster then maybe not...

As long as the two drive is not on the same line to the motherboard, then it is fast. If it on the same line, copy to hd then burn is faster.

glockboy, good point, didn't think of that. They would be on different IDE channels. Channel 1 has DVD burner and CD burner, channel 2 has a spare HD and the DVD reader would go there with it.

My Primary HD is a SATA drive, (not the gigabyte fast ones, one of the normal 150 ones)

IsaacHayes said:

Trashman: temporary file as in for a buffer or it copies the whole shebang before it fires up the 2nd drive to burn?

Click to expand...

It could depend on the program, but I'm not sure. I'm usually copying stuff that involves compression, first, and it always creates a temporary file. I think it makes a temporary of the whole shebang. I was using another copy program, not sure which, on my girlfriend's computer and we were just making 1 to 1 copies of non protected stuff and it still made a temporary file, so that's what I was basing my assumption on. I don't think I've ever copied anything from disc to disc without it making a temporary file, or if I did, I don't remember. It sounds like the others on this thread have some more in depth info than mine, though.

Beware of cheap discs! I don't know which ones you bought, but I noticed that the "GQ" ones from Fry's burned with errors. During playback (of the movies), they tended to lock up in certain parts, but after about 30 seconds would continue. I think the problem may have been resolved after I started burning at a slower speed when using those discs, but I'm not really sure since I starting using other brands for myself. Those cheapies are now my give aways.

It is possible to copy 'on the fly' w/o creating a file (well, justa buffer). It's a less reliable. I never have a problem with CDRs , but with DVDs I sometimes do.

Oh yeah, you're HD will still be doing work. Generally, copying on the fly will be more easily distrupted by running other apps than copying to a HD file and then burning.

Burn time is reduced. I've never timed/compared it, but I doubt it cuts the burn time in 1/2.

Hmm. Good points. I may save 3mins or so then, I don't think it's worth the hassle of opening up my case again hehe. I think I'll put the drive in the spare PC and throw some speakers on there.

I've never done it on the fly with a CDR, because my drive can burn them at 52x and that's smokin already.

I guess I need to burn through these 8x DVD's (staples brand, always burn fine for me so far) and get some 16x if I want more speed!

Thanks everyone.

If both discs are in immaculate conditions you might be able to pull off on-the-fly copying at 2 or 4x.

I can do CDs on the fly at 8x. Anything faster and smallest scratch causes a buffer under-run and stalls the process for a bit. Let this happen over and over again, overall time would be less at 8x without letting it stall.

Just to clarify, the (#)x speed of CD and DVD are different. 1x being the "normal" kB/s transfer rate of standard playback speed for respective media. CD is 150kB/s. I think DVD is around 1100kB/s

Yup. I guess I won't bother, it's not like it takes a whole lot of time anyways for what I'm doing anyways. Going to put it in as a DVD player on the 2nd pc I have so I can watch DVD's on the couch instead of in front of my main PC or in my bed.

I wouldn't stick someone's old burner in my computer either. New ones do a better job of burning, and they are cheap. The manufacturers don't usually update the firmware of old drives after a while so they don't have the write strategy for burning modern media. Things change fast in the optical disk business.

Using cheap media is okay for burning movies I suppose if you don't intend to keep them a long time. For archiving important data, I use the best quality media I can get, and burn them with a good drive. Movies can tolerate some errors on playback, but data can't.

It was from a dell, that was like 2 years old. They didn't release new firmware so he couldn't burn 8x or faster discs. He couldn't even burn at 2.4/4x whatever on them it would fail every time and the discs said you'd need a firmware upgrade. I searched and found a newer firmware from dell in europe, force flashed it and it worked, but still failed on the discs. It's an NEC drive and the NEC firmware for that model doesn't work as this one is a Dell oem version. When using the NEC firmware it wouldn't burn anything or work at all (couldn't read dvds either). So the europe firmware works but it isn't very new either.

I could get another drive for $40, but I'm not that desperate to have 2 burners in my system!


Just another reason why I hate OEM systems, even a popular common hardware they make their own specail version, then don't offer updates, and you can use the updates from the retail model either. I've updated all my Lite-on drives that I bought myself and they rock. I'm sure the NEC drive would be fine too if only it didn't come as "dell specs oem" and was retail..

The staples DVD's seem to be fine, and I've even put one in the hot car for a long time and then checked it's integrity bit/bit and it passed fine. I don't know who makes the optical disks for staples. My CD's I got from staples on sale and they are imation brand, after rebate $6 including tax. They have been put through heat test too and became warpy looking on the surface but play fine!! hehe.