Buying Stuff

Posted on 2006/04/18 13:52:07 (April 2006).

[Sunday 16th April]
Today I bought a load of stuff. First off I had a shopping list of electrical items that I wanted to buy, and whilst I didn't get them all, I did manage a fairly respectable three out of five. These consisted of a USB DVD writer (plus one DVD-RAM disk and 20 DVD-R disks), a USB memory stick, and one of those fourway power socket adapter thingies. The two items which fell by the wayside were, predictably, the larger ticket items - a big LCD panel and a networked hard drive.

I also bought a few odds and ends for the garden (well, balcony) - two pot plants, a long window box style planter, and some soil.

The evening was then spent with a short burst of gardening (which was very straightforward, and quite gratifying), followed by a longer burst of fiddling with newly acquired gadgets (which was not at all straightforward, and highly frustrating).

I am amazed that even in 2006, support for writable CDs/DVDs on PCs still leaves a lot to be desired. As a result of this, although it was partly my fault for not reading the manual, I believe I have totally destroyed the one DVD-RAM disk I bought. Well that's 500Yen (2 pounds and 50p) down the drain then. I really don't know what the problem was, but it just seem to get completely knackered almost straight away.

The DVD-R experiments were somewhat more succesful. I was reluctant at first to install the software that came with the browser - usually this kind of software that ships with a peripheral is a pile of crap, and there is also the akwardness of installing Japanese software on my (non-Japanese) OS. Once I finally caved in and installed it though, I was pleasantly surprised. Despite being entirely in Japanese I actually found it relatively easy to use, and it seemed to be quite good at making rather twee slideshow DVDs. The main purpose of getting the DVD writer was so that on a semi-regular basis I could send pictures to my grandmother. She's the one member of my family who cannot monitor my exploits via the internet, however, I was surprised to learn on my previous visit that she does now have a DVD player in her lounge.

Well, after writing this article I was prompted to go and have another fiddle, to see if I could get that DVD-RAM disk to work.

Basically I didn't seem to be able to get the disk to format before - neither in Explorer nor in Disk Management, despite having read somewhere that apparently XP should have sort of native support for this type of disk. I kept getting "Windows could not complete the format" errors, or similar.

So eventually I went on the I-O Data website (the model is a DVR-UN16R for reference) and found a firmware update. I flashed the firmware and also installed the other bit of software (B's Gold or something like that) that came with the writer. Then I restarted my PC as requested, and from then on I seemed to be able to format and use the disc OK.

Not really sure which one of those things actually solved the problem. I noticed the list of files that device manager had registered as the driver files for the device seems to have grown a bit, although I couldn't quite work out which it was that changed.

Still, it seems to work now so that's good...

Posted by John at 2006/04/18 15:21:51.

...and now I'm discovering that DVD-RAM is pig slow!

Still, at least it works.

Posted by John at 2006/04/18 15:28:41.

Maybe it was cdrbsdrv.sys that was the missing ingredient...? I think that might have been the new item in the list of drive files.

Posted by John at 2006/04/18 15:31:11.

Any picture of your *garden*?

Posted by Sheri at 2006/04/18 18:39:24.

Well John, my last DVD drive acquisition was an LG DVD-RAM model (plus all the other formats too...) I remember I certainly needed to install the LG driver for it to actually act as a DVD-RAM drive. I bought two blanks (a Maxell and an Imation) so I could play - B's Gold came with that dive too.

Funny thing was, I don't remember XP asking specifically for a DVD-RAM driver. I think by default it just guesses it's a regular USB DVD drive. Once the driver was loaded though all "RAMming" worked as expected. No coasters so far.. But at the price of DVD-RAM disks I'm glad about that!!!

RAM drives are supposed to be very good for video editing, and I think your bottle-neck might be the USB2 interface. A direct IDE connection to the drive, as supplied by my old desktop PC, was much, much faster. (I bought an external caddy so I could use it with my new laptop etc)

Posted by Nigel at 2006/04/18 23:00:07.

Sheri - I will attempt to take and upload a picture in the next day or two...

Posted by John at 2006/04/19 12:21:43.

I have recently bought a new computer (still have to add a post about it!!) and I have a DVD-DL drive in there... What is the difference between Dual Layer and RAM drives? I guess that DL are non rewritable, is that correct?

Posted by Lox at 2006/04/19 13:26:39.

Lox, Since JH is too lazy to answer;) RAM drives can work like a large external disk, similar to a USB flash memory stick except its a 4.7/~9GB disk, you can copy and access files from them using explorer for example. Dual Layer can be rewritable too, but you need to 'burn' in one go unlike RAM which is Random Access. Also RAM are much longer living, DL and RW Disks can only work a 1000

Posted by Kev at 2006/04/21 14:17:32.

..times or so since you are effectively melting the aluminum layers

Posted by kev at 2006/04/21 14:18:23.

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