Destination Option 3, 3rd-party program, not as ex

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Margaret Blauvelt
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Joined: Mon Sep 30, 2002 7:21 pm
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Destination Option 3, 3rd-party program, not as expected

Post by Margaret Blauvelt »

Hi Barry!

I have been merrily using AISBackup for a few months without much trouble, given that my Win98 and external HP 8230e CD-RW drive don’t always get along.

Recently I added a new 60 Gb hard drive and added Windows XP Pro (OEM) at the same time. I thought I could use the CD write utility that comes with XP by choosing, from the AISBackup “Script Set-up” screen, the destination option, “3. A CD using a third party CD Mastering Program.” I expected this to write the backup to my hard drive so that I could copy the files manually to CD with the Windows utility. Instead, AISBackup started to copy directly to the CD drive, apparently (to me) using the AISBackup CD write utility.

Trying to be clever, I then chose Option 4 instead to back up to my hard drive. All well and good, except how, in that case, can you change the AISBackup log to reflect the fact that the files were later moved to a CD?

Not that I have much against the AISBackup write utility, except it seems to do best at 2x (or at least that is what I found under Win98) and I maintain it ought to be able to do 4x, so I wanted to try other approaches to see what might be fastest, all things considered.

(Foolishly, when I first installed XP I tried installing my old HP/Roxio Adaptec before I found out XP does not support it. Then I downloaded HP’s more recent replacements: HP DLA and stripped-down RecordNow (Veritas). I had these working for awhile – well, I didn’t test DLA except to drag and drop a single file, but RecordNow worked fine to write a disk at a time. But XP kept showing an error message about having to disable the Adaptec drivers, so in editing my registry to get rid of them (per Microsoft’s website instructions), I managed to get the HP software to quit working, too. I suppose I’ll get them working eventually…)
Margaret
Barry
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Joined: Tue Aug 20, 2002 3:16 pm

CD Writer Speed and Problems

Post by Barry »

Hi Margaret

The following is based on using version 1.6.3 of AISBackup, which I guess you are already using.

Setting up a script using option 3, Using a third party CD writer, does write the backup to disk and then wait for you to create the CD yourself, although you may still create the CD using the integrated CD writer by choosing the Write option.

If you use option 4 instead you should use the Manage Backup / Copy Backup to CD option. This option correctly creates all the necessary files to manage the backup. The process temporarily moves the files to ‘CD folders’, each of which you burn the contents of to CD.

The Microsoft XP CD Writer needs to copy data to its own staging area on the C: drive and then create a CD image prior to burning, so in the case of AISBackup you may need 3 x 650-700 spare disk space to proceed, and this process may take some time.

CD Writer Speeds.

I wish we had a definitive answer here, but we haven’t got one, and we welcome any help from forum members. The bottom line is the AISBackup CD Writer is able to write CD’s at the manufacturers rated speeds as long as you are enabled to set things up properly (in terms of compatible PC & CD / Chipset / BIOS / Firmware / Drivers). Unfortunately some combinations do not work when DMA is set.

We had a problem with a TDK 321040X and were told by the TDK support desk that this device will only work without DMA set on one of our systems, thus condemning the drive to a maximum speed of about 8X rather than the rated 32X.

It seems that owners of PC’s which use the VIA chipset suffer most when it comes to not been able to set-up their CD writers with DMA set, having said that some drives do work with DMA set.

We have installed the cheapest CD writer we could find in the UK, an AOpen CRW4850, and this quite happily creates CD’s at 48X speed when using the AISBackup CD Writer with DMA set. Review here:

http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Article ... =0&index=0

Your CD writer is an external CD writer which does not use DMA at all, this should work at 4X speed okay but we have found re-writing CD-RW cannot often be done at the drives maximum write speed, whereas writing a blank (never used) CD-R or CD-RW works okay. We have also found that some modern media cannot be written by old drives, but using old 1X and 2X CD-RW media works okay.

Barry
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