Two Simultaneous Burns?

PeterWright wrote on 7/12/2008, 12:06 AM
I've just revived a 2x External Firewire DVD Burner by putting a 16x in it, and I'm going soon to try having two instances of DVDA open, each burning to a different burner.

If I try this with the same project in both instances, is it wise to have both instances referencing the same data on the same drive at slightly different times, or would that risk damaging the hard drive read heads?

If so, presumably it would help to make a copy of the DVD burn data onto a different physical drive, do that each DVDA instance can do its own thing and not get in the other's way.

Comments

Terje wrote on 7/12/2008, 12:42 AM
If I try this with the same project in both instances, is it wise to have both instances referencing the same data on the same drive at slightly different times, or would that risk damaging the hard drive read heads?

You are not really risking physical damage to your HD, not in any other way than any other reading from HD would cause damage. You are running a decent risk of creating a lot of coasters though. DVD burners are notorious for not liking a lot of other stuff going on while they are burning.

Problem is PC hardware really. If you want to do this my recommendation would be to get either specialty hardware or a separate PC for burning the other disk. Given the nature of IDE/EIDE/SATA, I would expect a high failure rate with your method.

Hmmm, I see you are using a FireWire burner. Might change things a little bit, but you are still reading twice from disk and burning to two destinations. It might work. It might not. No risk of damage to any hardware other than the blank disks though. Give it a shot and see if it works. If it does, good for you.
PeterWright wrote on 7/12/2008, 1:39 AM
Thanks Terje,

I just did a trial - the same project open twice, one burning to internal, one burning to external.

The internal, nominally at 18x, took 3min 8 sec ; the external, nominally 16x, I started 25 sec later and took 8min 51 sec. At that rate I'd be burning 4 in the time usually taken for 3.

Both discs have played without errors so far ....

I don't need any more drafts of this project yet, but I'll try with data for each Instance on separate Hard Drives and see if that changes things.

This machine's Dual Core - expect any advantage with Quad?
TheHappyFriar wrote on 7/12/2008, 5:48 AM
nero lets you burn multiple copies on multiple burners. that might be easier to use then dvda.
Terje wrote on 7/12/2008, 7:26 AM
This machine's Dual Core - expect any advantage with Quad?

Your gating factor here is the speed of burning, I'd expect no advantage with a faster CPU. As Friar says, DVDA isn't the perfect burning tool however, so if possible I would try to use NERO as a burning tool. Use DVDA to create an ISO and burn this with NERO. I am not sure if you can have multiple instances of NERO open burning to multiple disks, I have never tried.
TheHappyFriar wrote on 7/12/2008, 8:02 AM
non-OEM versions I think you can have multiple versions of nero open.

but I was refering to the option "use multiple recorders" in the "burn" menu. That works pretty well (at least it used to, I haven't used it in ~4 years, last time I had two burners).
johnmeyer wrote on 7/12/2008, 12:04 PM
The CPU is the least important issue. More important: background processes which might interrupt; DMA; hard drive data transfer and access specs; bus speeds.

The CPU does virtually nothing whatsoever during a burn.
ggrussell wrote on 7/13/2008, 7:23 AM
I use Roxio Easy Media Creator 10 which has a utility called Video Copy and Convert. I use DVDA to prepare the project to a video_ts folder. Video C&C can burn that to multiple burners. Can be any combination of internal or external burners as long as Windows recognizes them.

Since it is a simultaneous burn, they all burn at the same speed which is determined by the lowest common speed which is limited by the burners or the disc. For example if the burners are 16X and you use 8X media, they will all burn at 8X, etc.

I haven't looked for any free stuff that might burn to multiple drives.