laserfan

Well that didn't work, so I searched the registry, found 30 instances in CLASSES ROOT and 30 in LOCAL MACHINE and deleted them all and it's gone. Guessing they might have been around from a much earlier version and I never noticed...

LUK I have a related question: I see "Burn using ImgBurn" when I right-click an .iso file, and yet nowhere in Settings--Registry are any checks at all so I'm not sure why this appears. When I "Open with..." and choose Windows Disc Image Burner I do get "Burn disc image" but still there is the "Burn using ImgBurn". I wonder why that appears and maybe how to make it not appear when I right-click.

I couldn't tell ya. I have the WH16NS40 and a bunch of other LG drives including the GGW-H20L and they've all worked fine for me though honestly I do not do a lot of -RW burning. I would expect that the newest M-DISC burners have better lasers owing to the fact that they have to burn stone but although I've made a few M-DISCS I don't have long-term experience with it. >So, are LG Blu-Ray burners better than their DVD burners?

If I were a videographer and/or made precious family home videos I would certainly be using Mdisc exclusively for archival storage.

Yeah I have made Mdiscs (BDR-25) with ImgBurn.

Late to the party, but yes there is truth the the "end-of-disc" question; at least, when I'm able to visually see irregularities near the edges of discs, I start not to trust them. Next, if you drop a disc and it falls on edge, guess where the damage is most likely to manifest itself as a problem? Finally, in theory all discs are perfectly manufactured, such that the holes are exactly on-center and the discs themselves are perfectly round. But if there is ANY imperfect in this regard, the error will be most noticeable at the outer edge where "wobble" may be intolerable for some players/lasers. If you are making discs to save e.g. precious photos for long-term storage, you will spend $65 bucks on an LG M-Disc recorder and buy some M-Discs. They do not use inks/dyes at all but instead materials that effectively "etch your data in stone" and should last 10x your lifetime (milleniata.com). I have no affiliation with milleniata but have an LG burner and have made some M-Disc (blu-ray data) discs for keeping archival copies of our pics/videos/docs using ImgBurn. I expect these never to change in any way i.e. remain perfect for the rest of my days.

Along with trying other drives, you might get free IsoPuzzle which might be able to recover one or more of your DVDs. It keeps trying and it will even allow you to move the disc(s) from one drive to another until you get a complete copy. For irreplaceable stuff like family videos I now use M-Disc instead of ink dye writeable media. If they verify perfectly when written, they should last for 1,000 years.

Try a different burning program (Windows, BurnAware, CDBurnerXP, etc). If these error-out as well you prolly broke your drive.

Thanks LUK for the explanation, and the pointer--oddly, my Auto 'Change Book Type' setting was indeed un-checked!

In other words OP it appears to me that your disc has indeed been recorded as book type DVD-ROM. What makes you think it did not--does ImgBurn's Read mode show also DVD-ROM? LUK I must ask what "automatically" means because I just tried some new Memorex DVD+R discs and found that ImgBurn sets them to DVD+R booktype, where before all I'd seen from my burns with Verbatims is DVD-ROM. I don't know if DVD+R vs. DVD-ROM book type makes any difference with my player yet but I did try setting my LG player to assert DVD-ROM for these DVD+R discs and it did work. So how did the program decide in this case that the book type should be DVD+R? And in looking at my DVD+R DL discs I see they've been booktyped as "DVD+R DL". Sorry LUK but I'm seeking understanding that has not arrived with me yet...should I change the setting from Normal to DVD-ROM for both disc types?

Thanks LUK I guess I will stick with UDF 1.02 as that seems the lowest common denominator, and presumably if my M-Discs verify perfectly once, they will never degrade in any way!

I'm making archival backups of my various computer files and data to the new 25GB BD-R M-Discs from Milleniata, and for the first one I tried UDF 1.02 and it appears to have worked just fine. As the filesystem was prepared by ImgBurn, I saw a message appear "Generating UDF Compliant Names" which troubled me in that I thought UDF 1.02 was supposed to just leave names alone. Or maybe it had to do with looking for illegal characters? Another question: the wikipedia information for UDF 2.50 states that added was the capability for "optional duplication of file system information". I dunno that I want or need this, but wonder if ImgBurn supports this somehow nonetheless. I have seen comments here and elsewhere suggesting 2.50 or 2.60 for BD-R data backups but don't understand the benefit especially as 1.02 appears to be readable on any device. Comments? Thanks to LUK for this great tool!

That's not what ImgBurn is about. The easiest way to transfer files is via Ethernet, or if you aren't networked then pull the XP's drive and put it in your new PC, even temporarily. Or yes you can D&D from your DVD backups to your new PC.

Well, duh, I really have no idea how I missed this the first time-around! Yes it's there as plain as the nose-on-my-face, and it's clear that files are written according to their filename, and that each LBA represents 2048 bytes as I might have expected. Thanks LUK I know now what to expect when burning to disc.

Well, maybe it will, but my IsoBuster says "Sector View" needs the $40 license fee. Any others come to mind? How about my other question--does your program just write files sequentially by alphabetically, as they appear when dragged into the Source window?

Regarding the preparation of files for burning to disc, many have warned that writing to to outside edge of a disc may be inadvisable for accurate writing/reading purposes. So advice is given to not fill discs too full for example. I wonder if we know, or can determine after-the-fact, where files will be/are located physically on a disc? For example, if I burn a single-sided BD-25 with a Blu-ray movie program, is it correct to assume that the last of the STREAM folder contents, then the CERTIFICATE files, would be the files written to the outermost edge? For a HDD you can use an app like Defraggler to see where files are located on a disc--as I write this I wonder if at least the Analyze function works on removeable optical media.

Sony (inventor) has driven the standards group to which all player mfrs must adhere.

Welcome to Sony's world.

A DVD does contain Blu-ray compatible video--but you have to re-author it to BDMV using e.g. tsMuxeR. You'll lose all menus & extras.

Clearly BR would be most appropriate for you (2 discs and you've got everything). But both DVD and BR are susceptible to aging and deterioration over time--you can look for "archival quality" discs and get the best of each type to minimize such problems. But for precious family photos and/or videos I would never rely on discs alone. Sure, make (two sets or more) of DVD/BR, but also get a cheap external USB hard drive or flash disk and put one or two of those in a fireproof safe. You can NOT be too careful when it comes to backups.

I'm not faced with LB decisions often enough that this doesn't confuse me (it ALWAYS does!) so that tipsheet and your note are going to help me a lot. Thanks!

I ditched ZoneAlarm for the free Comodo Internet Security Premium (free!) and it is an order of magnitude better than ZA. I say that having spent serious $$ on ZA.

@OP you can only burn BD format video to DVD media if the program meets DVD-capable bitrate restrictions (DVD discs do not spin at as high a rate as BD for example). So if you are intending to publish anything on DVD media you have to know those restrictions and encode your audio/video accordingly. IMO you are best off to use BD media, then you don't have to worry about this. Further, you are much more likely to make discs that play in most BD players if they are BD-R. It's a real crap shoot with DVD-Recordable media.

Thanks a lot--I can't begin to tell you how hard I (unsuccessfully) looked for this!

I had a problem with my computer and had to reinstall ImgBurn, and the settings got trashed somehow. Now whenever I launch ImgBurn, which I have set to do so in Mode > Build, it defaults to Destination of Image File. It seems to me that before it always came-up with Device checked (Output menu), but now I have to either check Device in the menu or click on the "Switch to device output" button in the dialog. Am I wrong in remembering that it can be made to come-up in Device Output mode, regardless of whether a disk is in the drive? How?