DVD Problem...?

Question

I'm a kind of data gatherer, and every now and then i backup all of my new downloads and aquasitions to DVD cd. My problem is this. One of my backups was a DVD Multisession backup. The first session i wrote 1 Gig of Data to the disc and the second session i wrote 3 Gigs of Data to the disc. When i try to access tge entire contents of the disc, only the first session is displayed.

NOTE: I did close the second session.

Is there a way to get back the second sessions (3Gigs) of data???

Answer 1

Well, it has been my experience that many readers\writers are not able to read the second session on DVD's without a third party application...In a Windows situation ISObuster -
http://www.isobuster.com/isobusterdownload.php -
would probably cope. Windows issues with DVD multisession, like Win9x/me sees only the first session, and with Win2k/xp there was an issue when burning more than 4G (but this was supposedly fixed by one of the service packs - do you have SP2 installed?).

Let us look at this problem a little further: I have several CD\DVD writers\readers, (after all I play around with these things just for fun, when I have time, which is something sadly missing of late). Some while back I wrote a multisession backup of files off my HDD using a BenQ 1620 (probably the best DVD writer going) and Nero. Everything seemed to go alright with the writing of the disc but when I came to recovering the information I was only able to see the first session on all the readers\writers except for the NEC 1300, which was able to see both sessions. It was now obvious that the information was there so, after a little research, I employed the ISObuster program and in over 90% of cases it was able to read and copy (onto my HD) the second session of the disk.

BTW, did you delete those files from your HDD? Just because you burned them, they are not automatically deleted unless you set it up that way. In the future if you did, please turn the deletin feature off in the event that the data did not get burned - rare, but it does happen. The files could still be in the "Files Waiting to Burn" folder of your Windows CD feature and you can retreive them there.

Answer 2

Hi!

This is a DVD disk problem. If your OS is prior to Windows XP, such as Windows 98 then the OS WILL NOT see the second, third, etc... session on the disk.
There is a workaround though. Try using one of the latest versions of UltraISO from EZB Systems. On the file menu there is an option that enables you to open CD/DVDs directly from your drive. Once there, you can extract the contents to the HDD and then burn it again to another CD/DVD.
Other programs might do this as well, but I only used UltraISO for this matter. Remember, not all versions have this options (ie 7.0 if I correctly remember). Try 7.5.
Another idea is to use NERO to create an image of the disk and then burn it on another. If the images size is around 4GB the outcome might be OK.

Good luck!