dbminter

I came across some rather inspiring information on USB 3 speeds. Every day, I use the latest version of Macrium Reflect to backup 53 GB of partitions data to a USB 3 HDD on a USB 3 cable. However, I don't have USB 3 ports on this PC. So, I'm still stuck in the USB 2 speed past as this PC was bought new in summer 2011. I read on a post on Macrium's forums that someone backs up 60 GB in 8 minutes! I can only dream of getting those kinds of speeds. I don't think I can add a USB 3 card into this PC. The expansion slot is taken up by the graphics card! There's some smaller PCI slots, I think, but I don't know if a card can be added to them for USB 3. Actually, I think a Dell representative told me in chat that they could add one when I chatted with them to ask them if there were USB 3 ports on this Dell XPS 8300. So, who knows?

Well, I took the plunge. I just burned a BD-R with an inkjet printable surface on it. I wrote to it with a Sharpee CD/DVD safe marker. Well, they call it a CD/DVD marker. Not necessarily safe. Anyway, it wrote to the surface just fine.

You know the funny thing? I use inkjet printable surface discs for my DVD+R DL's even though I don't have a printer that will write to them. I use them so I can write on them with CD/DVD safe markers. I don't know if Sharpee ink would bleed through, so I don't use those. And, the funnier thing is I've never actually written to their surfaces with markers! I don't even know if this idea works! It's something I just plan to do one day.

Odd, I thought I had just read that inkjet printable disc label surfaces were just stuck on there like those labels you apply with those large, circular button type things.

Plus, I read Windows 8 might have been the killer. Supposedly, Lightscribe drivers don't work in Windows 8 because they were never updated to work with them. I still Windows 7 so I can't say. I have no problem finding them as Amazon.com always has the Verbatim DVD-R's in stock I look for. It's the drives that are hard to find. The drawback to printed labels on discs is that over time they separate from the disc. The drawback to Lightscribe is the labels fade awfully easily. I've got some that only like 2 years old and they're already very faint. Still, I like to use them as a somewhat convenient way to label a disc's contents.

Looks like Lightscribe was already phased out! From HP's official site, they started phasing out Lightscribe drives in HP computers in 2011, due to "industry conditions beyond our control." Which probably translates into "low sales."

I have to wonder if Lightscribe is being phased out. NewEgg no longer offers internal Lightscribe enabled DVD burners. Only USB ones, and even at that, only a handful at inflated prices. Well, there is one older drive from a reseller, but that, too, is being offered at too high of an inflated price. $99! What really makes me wonder if Lightscribe is on its way out is lightscribe.com. I went by the main site and it's no longer active. It's dead. Why would they kill off the main site if the technology is still viable?

Oh, yeah, there was also Pioneer to choose from. I forgot about that. I currently have an LG but there are limitations to it that make me wary of getting another one. The DVD-RW's it writes are apparently written in some proprietary way. DVD-RW's it writes cannot be formatted or used in my Panasonic DVD recorder until they are fully formatted by one of my Lite-On's. And it's just iffy on rewritables to begin with. My experience with DVD+RW has been that, randomly, writes and verifies will finish, but when you try to read the contents, the discs are unreadable and can't be reused/formatted again. So, there's apparently some sort of proprietary write strategies to rewritables on this LG that make it unusable.

My current Lite-On drive is listed with PLDS in its ID string in ImgBurn. I found that PLDS stands for Philips & Lite-On Digital Solutions. So, does that mean that Philips and Lite-On are basically the same company? Sort of like how Sony and Optiarc were basically the same thing after Sony bought them up. I ask because when I choose my next Blu-Ray burner, I have a choice of Philips or Asus over LG. I had a Lite-On Blu-Ray burner and it swore me off of Lite-On after my last DVD burner from them was bad, too. So, I definitely don't want a Philips if they are essentially Lite-On rebranded, or vice versa. Thanks!

Question about BD-R DL's and BD-RE DL's. Do they read the same way? With Layer 0 reading to a maximum X speed and then the reading of Layer 1 starting at that X maximum and then the speed gradually decreases? I've not had a chance yet to get any DL or XL media.

Oops! I said SATA VI was actually a type of cable! I meant SATA III, which supports 6 Gbps, I believe.

Yeah, it's been so long since I had a new DVD-RW, I wouldn't remember if it needed an erase or not. But, it makes sense that a new one wouldn't as there's nothing on it yet.

I noticed that when writing to DVD-RW's, they have to be quick erased by ImgBurn before they can be written to. DVD+RW just write directly.

Something that might work if you have UltraIISO, if UltraISO supports the proprietary NRG format, is to try loading the NRG in UltraISO. Then, saving it as an ISO file. I don't know if this will work, but it's a suggestion.

At least it's finally not a case where it does it for me and only for me!

Why is that DVD+RW needs formatting and DVD-RW doesn't?

I did not know that. It's been so long since I've needed to format one, probably not one new in 10 years, I never noticed it before. I mostly use +RW. I did have to format a -RW recently only because my LG Blu-Ray burner doesn't write to them correctly. When VIDEO_TS is burned to them in it, my Panasonic DVD recorder can't use them again until they are fully formatted in one of my LiteOn drives. So, that format, a full one, was the last time I can consciously recall ever formatting one. So, you're right.

Unfortunately, Avidemux just doesn't work. I knew something was up when the slider wouldn't move. I tried using the mouse to move it to the end of the video clip because I needed to trim out Freemake's stupid logo that they add to the end of their clips in Video Convertor. But, the slider wouldn't move. So, tried some of the buttons at the bottom. Discovered one that advances the slider by 25 seconds. So, I thought I'd just use it to advance to the end of the clip and use the individual frames button to go back. Avidemux just started Not responding for a while but finally made it to the end. However, this tool is NOT for video editing. You need to be able to move the slider with the mouse to move to different positions within the video. Jumping by 25 seconds at a time and then advancing back frame by frame just doesn't cut it.

Wait, you're saying that either DVD-RW or DVD+RW don't need to be formatted? I thought I had to format both of them before in the past. Also, why don't they ship rewritable discs formatted? Floppies eventually were shipped formatted because it was such an annoyance to format them ourselves.

Yeah, I was using Load project instead of Load most recent project. I never tested it with Load most recent project.

Try loading a Project where the UDF and ISO fields are blank, no text. That's how my job is. And, before you load the job, place the "focus" on the UDF field, i.e. place the cursor in the UDF field. That's where I had mine when I load the Project.

Do you know how many total there are?

I was wondering about the list of sayings that appears in the lower left corner of ImgBurn when it starts. Did you actually add each one to a list or was it a pre-compiled list? Or was it pre-existing and you added your own to them? Because of the sheer number of them that can appear, that looks like a monumental task!

I don't know if this would be considered a bug, but it is something I've been able to reproduce every time I've tested it. I had a VIDEO_TS job where I had entered UDF and ISO9660 labels text. I then loaded a saved Project file but I noticed something. While the UDF and ISO9660 labels text was reset to blank, the number of letters on UDF and the "progress bar" that shows how much text is used/is available does not reset to zero until you select another Options tab like Options and then select the Labels tab again. Then, the text number and bar are reset.

Funny, according to the ImgBurn firmware check I did on this drive I swapped in, it's apparently a rebranded LiteOn! I fell out with LiteOn after my last 2 purchase. This drive I'm replacing I had to order a replacement for from NewEgg right out of the box because it didn't work right. My next purchase, though, put LiteOn on my list. I got a Blu-Ray drive from them that did not write DVD-9 Video_TS images properly to discs; they had random pauses in playback on them. 2 out of 3 I burned did that. Then, it stopped writing BD-RE's after half a year! I notice there are no more LiteOn Blu-Ray burners on NewEgg where I got it. So, maybe they exited the Blu-Ray business or NewEgg got too many returns/complaints on them and stopped carrying them. Or maybe LiteOn is just getting out of the optical drive business altogether. Who knows?