Why can't I copy a Retrospect created DVD-R with toast?

[shear]

I am testing out Retrospect 6 for OS X.

It seemed to work well, I created a DVD-R set consisting of 4 full DVD-Rs and 1 partially used DVD-R.

 

To my surprise, and to which I very much appreciated, it actually allowed writing again to a partially written to DVD, I imagine it is due to packet writing or some other proprietary method.

 

However, later when I tried to duplicate this DVD-R using Toast, I got an I/O Error code -36 in Toast. This is very worrisome. Is there no way do duplicate a DVD-R created with Retrospect with any conventional tools, or otherwise? I find this hard to imagine. Perhaps a darwin bsd shell tool can copy this "raw" special DVD that Retrospect managed to create....or something hopefully easier really.

 

I just wanted to make a copy or 2 of each DVD in the set to store off site.

[CallMeDave]

You are correct that packet writing is what allows Retrospect to make small additions to a recordable optical disk without the substantial overhead seen with track at once or disk at once burning.

 

Toast doesn't do packet. That's why it can't play with your DVD-R disk (and why you couldn't use a read-only DVD player to access the data, either). This also holds true with CD-R(W) vs CD-ROM.

 

You can use Retrospect to copy your data to additional DVD-R (or any other supported type) disks; Tools-Copy-Transfer.

 

 

Dave

[shear]

hi dave,

thanks for the quicky reply.

this is very confusing.

i had a plan to backup the first 3 finished DVD-Rs with toast.

and then, since the final partial dvd-r is left in the powerbook and being changed daily or weekly, burn a copy of that final dvd whenever i got a chance, say once a week, with toast, and store offsite as well.

 

i am not sure i understand the flow of how i end up with 4 additional DVDs with the Tools/Copy/Transfer process. that method actually asked me to create a 2nd backupset, which i'm really not sure i want? if i run that once, how/when do i run that again to ensure i have a dup of the 4th DVD-R as it changes? and what if i want a 3rd offsite copy. do i have to create yet another backup set? this sounds time consuming...i assume this isnt as quick as a 15minute 4x DVD copy?

 

also, i did try what you said and i'm not even sure its possible on my powerbook. i created the second backup set. told it to transfer everything there. it came up with a message saying "you must have 2 drives in your computer to be able to perform this. you will not be able to swap disks during copy", but then it proceeded to ask me to insert the new 1-target blank dvd-r anyway. so at that point i hit cancel and gave up.

 

any ideas? what about the standard cd copy method, is that totally out? perhaps there are any other cd writing tools other than toast that can write in packet mode on the mac? i would imagine that worst case, it would be doable if i found a PC to do it on?

 

btw, off topic, but are these DVD-Rs i just made cross platform readable/restorable/writable using the PC version of Retrospect Desktop?

thanks again