[PLUG] Copying CD/DVD with two drives

[Michael M.]

On Sat, 2007-04-14 at 09:29 -0700, John Jason Jordan wrote:
> On Fri, 13 Apr 2007 22:29:18 -0700
> Paul Mullen <pm at nellump.net> dijo:
> 
> > On Fri, Apr 13, 2007 at 05:48:16PM -0700, John Jason Jordan wrote:
> > > to the other at the same time. It insists that it must write to the
> > > same drive that it copies from, so it must copy to the hard drive,
> > 
> > When I select "Tools->Copy CD", K3b shows a dialog that contains,
> > among other widgets, two pull-downs labeled "CD Reader Device" and
> > "Burning Device". I'd test it out, but I don't have two drives.
> > It doesn't work as expected?
> 
> No, it does not work as expected.
> 
> I was trying to create a copy of a Knoppix 5.1 live/install CD, as a
> test. I launched K3b and then put the Knoppix CD in scd0 and a blank CD
> in Scd1, closed the drawers, and waited until the lights on the drives
> went out. In K3b I clicked on Tools > Copy CD. The dialog box showed
> two drop down boxes. The top one said Source Medium and showed the
> Knoppix CD. The lower one said Burn Medium and showed Empty CD Rom.
> When I clicked on Start it proceeded to copy the Knoppix CD to /tmp.
> The light on scd1 remained off. When it finished copying the Knoppix CD
> to /tmp it paused and asked me to click on Continue. When I did it then
> copied the contents of /tmp to scd1. The result is that it takes twice
> as long to copy the CD because of the separate copy/write processes,
> plus it litters the hard drive. It does delete the file from /tmp when
> it is finishes. But my point is that it should be able to copy directly
> from one drive to the other without using the hard drive as an
> intermediary. I can do this on my Windows 2000 desktop where I also
> have two optical drives, and I'm sure it can be done on Linux. I just
> need to figure out which CD copy utility to use.
> 
> I recently tried Brasero. It works better; that is, it appears to be
> willing to copy directly from one drive to the other. However, when I
> start the copy process it errors out. The error message says the burn
> medium is not mounted. Yet it is definitely mounted. It is obviously a
> bug. 
> 
> Maybe there is another utility out there to try -- that is other than
> K3b, GnomeBaker and Brasero.


I'm not sure what you want to do is advisable, honestly.  Most CD-ROM
copying apps default to copying files to a temporary directory on the
hard drive first because it's much safer.  Copying directly from CD-ROM
to CD-ROM introduces all sorts of possibilities for errors -- jitter
errors, uneven read/write speeds, I/O errors, etc.  All of the advice I
ever saw about copying CD-ROMs on usenet, in a Yahoo group I used to
belong to devoted to CDR issues, recommended not trying to make a direct
CD-to-CDR copy.  Your chances of ending up with coasters are much
greater.

See [1] here what the Feurio FAQ has to say about it.  Quote: "So
'on-the-Fly' copy should only be used if e.g. there is no room on the
harddisk for an image. Making a copy via an image file is always much,
much safer!"

[1] http://www.feurio.com/English/faq/faq_vocable_ontheflycopy.shtml


-- 
Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA
"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions
of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to
dream." --S. Jackson