Can't successfully back up to DVD+RW media

[dbookbinder]

I have been unable to backup to rewritable DVD. Retrospect identifies my DVD writer as _NEC DVD_RW ND-2500A and has no problems backing up to read-only DVD discs. I can also write to DVD+RW discs using Nero with only occasional errors.

 

Retrospect Professional 6.5 appears to successfully erase the disc and do the backup, but when it tries to read it during the Compare phase, I get thousands of errors. They are of the form:

 

Backup Set format inconsistency (10 at 1)

Backup Set format inconsistency (10 at 2)

Backup Set format inconsistency (10 at 4)

Backup Set format inconsistency (10 at 5)

Backup Set format inconsistency (10 at 5)

 

Please advise as to how I can backup to rewritable media.

 

Thanks,

David

[dbookbinder]

In the previous message, I meant to say "and has no trouble backing up to write-once DVD discs (DVD+R)."

 

 

Thanks,

David

[jhg]

Based on a Google search of the string NEC DVD_RW ND-2500A, your drive appears to support

8x writing.

 

1) Are you using 8X compatible media?

 

2) Have you tried reducing the write speed (Devices/Properties/Set Write Speed)?

I had this problem on an older system that wasn't capable of keeping up with

an 8x drive. Reducing the write speed solved the problem.

[dbookbinder]

The problem I'm having is with DVD+RW media that has a write speed of 4x, which is the maximum write speed of the drive with DVD+RW media, so there is a match between the two. The system is new, and has an Athlon 2600+ processor running at somewhat over 2GHz. It does not have a problem writing to 8x DVD+R media, only with the DVD+RW rewritable media.

 

 

 

I can try reducing the write speed, and that may solve the problem, but I don' know why I should need to, since the drive happily writes 8x media at 8x and 4x media at 4x when I use Nero. It seems, in other words, to be a Retrospect problem. (I wasn't aware of the Set Write Speed command; thanks for pointing me to it.)

 

 

 

Thanks for thinking about this,

 

David

[jhal]

I would agree with restricting write speed, and I would also recommend trying another media. I recently bought a supply of bulk dvd rw's that have a failure rate of 15%, and have been returned. It is not sufficient to accept a media brand because nero or easy can write to it. Retro is very particular, and has more write verification. I have good luck with verbatim & sony brands, but I am using a different brand of writer, and there are peculiarities within writers, so try a few different ones.

 

If this device is not native supported, you may wish also to redo the custom config (limiting the +r/+rw format) if the last time it was done with less than 5.3 rdu installed.