Retrospect renders DVD+RWs unusable ??

[repter]

I've been using Retrospect for many years now and am aware that it uses its own proprietary formatting of CD/DVD media. Last weekend however I upgraded my hardware to have a DVD-writer.

 

It has given me some headaches to figure out (I thought the media or writer was defective) but it seems like once I have used a DVD+RW in Retrospect it has become unusable for anything else. I tried doing a full erase in Nero and then write data onto it, which both worked fine, but when I then re-insert the burned DVD, Windows cannot read it at all. I could reproduce this on two different DVD-writers. I then tried with a brand new DVD disk and that one gave no trouble at all.

 

I suspect that somehow a full erase in Nero does not get rid of all the Retrospect stuff on the disk. I already had an indication of this right after the erase, when Nero (and Windows in general) was extremely sluggish until I ejected the erased DVD. I didn't have this problem in the past with CDRWs.

 

Q: how can I really/fully erase a DVD+RW that has been used in Retrospect ? Is Nero at fault not doing the erase thoroughly enough, or is there a deeper problem ?

 

 

 

PS: I should add that the DVD+RWs were still usable in Retrospect afterwards, so it's not like they are ruined, they just don't work anymore for regular DVD-writing. I eventually reused a number of already used DVD+RWs in a succesful full backup of over 40G (with verification).

 

 

 

Tnx,

 

 

 

R.

[natew]

Hi

 

This is not uncommon. I would say the fact that you were able to use CD RWs again in the past is more unusual than the trouble you are having now.

 

I don't know the specifics but I believe that on the initial format RW programs write a header on the media that is not overwritten later.

 

Nate

[repter]

Quote:

---

I would say the fact that you were able to use CD RWs again in the past is more unusual than the trouble you are having now.

 

---

 

Thanks for the answer! I guess I'm lucky then, that I can reuse my old Retrospect CDRWs for MP3 or the like (even works with my new writer) .

 

R.