A Few DVD-RW Burning Problems

[Erasmus]

Hi Everyone,

I've got a few questions regarding DVD-RW. My ultimate goal is to burn a .iso disk image I have of Windows 7 to a DVD, so I can install it. I'm hoping to use a DVD-RW.

I tried burning it straight to the disk, but the burn immediately stopped, and said something like "Medium disk error" or something. I mentioned it to my dad, and he said you have to format DVD-RW's before you burn to them. Is this true? I might see if I can buy a DVD drive cleaner soon, but any other ideas are welcome.

Anyways, now when I put the DVD in my computer, it spits it back out, so I can't seem to reformat it. It would be a shame to lose a perfectly good DVD-RW, so does anyone have any tips on how I can reformat this DVD?

Finally, if I want to use this DVD-RW to install Windows 7, will I have to format it NTFS? If so, is it possible to do this on a mac? Can anyone point me to some software that will do this?

Pre-Thanks for any help.

 

[Erasmus]

Surely someone has an answer to at least one of these problems?

 

[arogge]

What did you use to write the disc image? If you didn't use a standard software package, that could be the problem. OS X writes files well to DVD-R, but I could not get it to do what Nero or Toast would do much better.

You may also have a problem using a DVD-RW as a boot disc, but I'm not sure if this was fixed as I haven't used -RW media in awhile. It was too expensive and unreliable compared to DVD-R.

What's probably happened now is that OS X screwed up the DVD-RW, something that it did to me several times. I put it in the trusty Windows box and used Nero to reformat... no more problems. Stick it back into the Mac and let OS X mess with it, and back to the problems again.

I don't believe I've ever seen an NTFS-formatted DVD. The fix is Windows, Nero, Burn ISO image to..., make bootable, done. Windows... it just does what you want. Sorry, OS X! While you're waiting for the Mac to spit out your DVD-RW again, you can scan your hard drive for faces.

Other than that, I'm clueless. OS X does DVD-R well, but not DVD-RW and definitely not bootable images.

 

[Erasmus]

Well, I managed to sort it all out.

1) I managed to recover two DVD-RW disks that had failed to burn (if I reinserted them in my computer, they were spat straight out) by opening Disk Utility, and selecting the DVD drive. Then, when I put the disks in, they were not spat out, and I was able to erase them.

2) I was able to successfully burn the Windows 7 .iso to a DVD-RW using my Dad's old G4 Powerbook. I'm pretty pissed off that my Dad's super old G4 does what my semi-new MBP can't. This was using Disk Utility as well to do the burning.

3) The burnt DVD-RW with Windows 7 on it worked like a champ during the Windows 7 install. No formatting of DVD as NTFS or anything. It just worked.

So, in summary, I have Windows 7 Professional up and running on my MBP. I am also annoyed that my MBP's inability to burn DVD's properly has wasted so much of my time. But an old G4 managed to save the day.

WTF???

 

[arogge]

I was going to suggest loading Disk Utility first, but even that trick didn't work for me, after OS X screwed up the DVD-RW. It refused to see the DVD in the drive and claimed some error had occurred when I tried to do an Erase on the "unknown" DVD volume, and then OS X issues an Eject command. The system should never eject a disc by itself, unless it was asked to by the user. That's when I learned to use Nero on Windows.

At least you got Windows 7 installed.