I can't open (with Windows Explorer) DVDs that I had previously burnt? When I view the disc, my PC won't even recognize the disc. It is as if the disc isn't even in the PC. These inaccessibe DVDs usually have photos (jpg's) and video (avi's). What is the problem? How can I burn future DVDs so that I can access them in the future?
Hi, in order to go further into your problem please tell us which program you are using to burn, speed you are burning and media, what type of file sysetm you are using to burn the discs. Have you tried using another kind of media to see if the problem persists?
Details of my DVD burning: 1) Burning program: Roxio Classic 2) Burning speed: 4X 3) Type of file system I burnt with: ??? (I didn't see any choices.) 4) DVD discs brand names: Royal Falcon, Maxell, and Imation. (The Imation disc opens on my Acer laptop but not the Dell desktop.) 5) Type of files on the disc: Royal Falcon and Maxell discs have mostly jpeg's with a few avi's. Imation disc has a variety (MS Word, jpeg's, Powerpoint, Adobe, etc.)
There are many causes for the symptoms you describe, but the answer you will most likely immediately get is the the brands you describe are "inferior." Quality of medium is a possible cause, but far less likely than: 1) the recordings were multi-session recordings on DVD-R or DVD-RW that were not finalized. (That means that the table of contents were not written to the discs and only the recording drive can read them. If the Acer recorded to the Imation samples, that may be why the Dell desk top cannot read them.) 2) If the discs are rewritable discs, conflicts on packet-writing may be a problem. 3) Your drive may not be compatible with the discs you are using. A firmware update may resolve the problem, but only if the write strategies for the discs you mentioned were added in the firmware update. 4) The discs may be poor quality. This does happen, but it is not as common as many people think. If a different brand such as Taiyo Yuden or Verbatim works on the drives under the identical conditions, then you can rule out possibilities 1 and 2.
I don't remember if the DVDs were burnt on multi-session burnings. If they were, wouldn't the Table of Contents be written? In future, are you suggesting that, when burning DVDs, always choose the single session burning (closed for future burning)? I always choose the option to allow for future burning. WOuld this choosing mess up the DVD for future reading?
The process of finalization closes a disc because the process writes the table of contents and the lead-in and lead-out portions of the disc. Until that time, there is no table of contents written to the disc because more could be added later in subsequent sessions if the disc were written in a multi-session mode. Since the disc is not finalized, only the recording drive can read or write to it because the software on that particular machine temporarily saves what has been written to the disc. No other drive or player knows that information; and, since there is no table of contents, no other drive or player can decipher what's on the disc. When a complete copy of a video or of data is recorded, the software knows the beginning and the end of the information. This makes it easy to finalize and write a table of contents. In the case of video recorded from a TV program, the software does not know when the program will end or if additional programs will be written to a disc once one program is complete. That's why the VR format was developed--it's the video equivalent of a multi-session recording where the table of contents is written during finalization or when the disc's capacity is reached. It is always safer to record a disc in a single recording, disc-at-once because: 1) the recording laser is most stable when it has uniform power applied to it (rather than have it turned on and off at different times) 2) the linking of files is more accurate (rather than have a second session be appended to a very tiny spot on the disc where the earlier recording left off. The "lossless linking" of a DVD+R/+RW has an advantage here because the addresses are part of a high frequency wobble that lies in the groove wobble.) Since you mentioned that you prefer that option of adding files later to a disc, it sound more likely that the problem is one of an "open" disc not being able to be read because it's missing the table of contents. You have two choices to get around the situation in the future: 1) always close a DVD+R/-R disc after recording disc-at-once or 2) use a DVD+RW disc because that format was designed for multi-session recordings with temporary tables. (The DVD-RW is merely a sequential video recording format modeled after the DVD-R. That's why HP, Sony, and Philips broke from the DVD Forum to introduce the DVD+RW as a replacement. It's long story.)
So what if you far away from the drive you used to burn the DVD ? Is there a program that can access the data or it's pretty much useless untill you place it back in the drive that wrote that data ?
