T.I 10 images corrupt after burning to DVD, but not before?

Tried deleting my original thread due to so many edits. I just had to make a new one with a proper title.​

I'm finding that True Image 10 Home files work fine (creating, exploring and mounting in WinXP) when created on an external USB drive. They continue to work fine when placed on the desktop of a different computer (running Vista), but then seem to get corrupted when burning to DVD using Nero or Vista's own built-in DVD burning function. The corruption manifests itself as the Mount function complaining that the file is corrupted or the Explore function suddenly asking for a password (when none was used to create the files.)

The files were split by TrueImage so that they'd fit on DVD's. I happen to be using DVD-R's, although I have some +R's, too. I've burned at 8x and 3x (Nero and Vista speeds) with no change. The discs from Nero pass validation after burning. What on earth is happening? I can't just leave them on a USB hard drive.

 

1. I'd suspect the DVD brand of disks first. Have you tried another brand?

2. I would also try burning with Nero at a lower speed, 4x or even 2.4x. Some DVD burners make errors at their full rated speed, especially when the disk is full or almost full.

3. You could copy the image to an internal hard drive and burn it from there. There may be some problems moving the data over the USB bus to the writer.

4. If that fails to create good DVDs, then you should try a DVD burner on a different computer.

 

If the UDF file system is being used check what version it is. Don't know about TI10 but TI9 only wanted UDF not later than 2.01.

Do you do a "verify after burn" with Nero or Vista?

 

I thought the brand of DVD idea was compelling, but no go. I had been using Memorex DVD-R's, so I changed to Verbatim DVD+R's and slowed all the way down to 2.4x burn speed. Even with all that, only one disc worked.

I have tried burning images directly from the external USB hard drive to the DVD burner. I tried first copying the images back to the internal hard drive and burnt again. I have even managed to copy the images to my network storage box in the next room.

I have also checked out the UDF version. Nero is using UDF 1.02 (not a typo of 2.01! haha).

I did a 'Verify after burn' with Nero. I didn't catch that option in Vista. Nero seems to think the discs are perfectly recorded. TrueImage thinks otherwise. I booted with the TrueImage boot disc to check the images and it found them to also be invalid.

When I first installed Vista, I installed my old copy of TrueImage 8. Version 8 had some issues with the new security features in Vista, causing it to complain at startup, etc. I'm thinking of using the money back guarantee on TrueImage 10. I really like the program, but it is simply not working out.

 

What brand and speed is your burner?

Do you have a lot of programs running in the background when you burn? What does Nero report about the buffer usage? What is the minimum percentage?

 

Humour me and split the TI files at 1492 MB. This will cause the burning program to burn them as ISO not UDF. It is the way I always split them and 3 tib files fit nicely on a DVD.

BTW, if your archive spans mulitple DVDs I don't believe you can Mount them, they all have to be in a single folder first.

 

The drive is an NEC DVD±RW Dual-Layer capable 8x burner. (Model ND-6650A) I trust the burner itself because it's been flawless.

I don't really have anything running in the background during the burn, other than Firefox. The Nero buffer level reports a max of 97%, usually 94% and a low of 7%. (That's regardless of burn speed.)

 

I'll try that the next time I do an image. I don't have the same system at hand anymore to test with. Maybe I'll try using DVD+RW's to test with, even though changing to re-writables can change the equation enough to make it work.

I noticed that the files all have to be grouped together in the same folder before they can be mounted. Copying them from the DVD's into an empty folder left them just as corrupted as they claimed to be separately on the DVD's.

 

Sorry if i'm getting the wrong end of the stick here...

..how are you burning them to disk with Nero? Just that UDF is getting mentioned. When i burn stuff to dvd with Nero i never see any mention of UDF i just burn a plain jane 'data dvd'

Isn't UDF to do with the packet writing way of burning to dvd/cd?

Anyway - what happens if you copy these supposedly corrupted files back to a hard drive - do they still get reported as corrupted or do they work ok?

 

That's my take on the situation too.

 

No expert on this but if your data file is over about 2GB the file system has to be UDF, the ISO system won't handle it. I also think that when packet-writing is used the file system is UDF.

 

Calculate the checksum using free XCSC or Accuhash or whatever you want for a large image file on HD. Burn it to DVD and verify and then calulate it from the DVD - they must agree. If they do, then copy the file back to HD and run the calculation on the copied file - again it must agree. If you get bad numbers then you have a hardware problem with the DVD drive, media, interface, RAM,... but you will have ruled TI in or out of the picture.

You might run a memory diagnostic like memtest86+ version 1.70 free from www.memtest.org overnight for good measure.

 

This sure is sounding like a hardware problem related to large file sizes. There's no question that the DVDs are really corrupt.

Seekforever's idea of checking the Checksums may shed some light on this. If the checksup of a file on DVD doesn't match the checksum after it is copied back to the hard drive, it's definitely a hardware problem.

His suggestion of splitting the files into smaller pieces is also a good one to try.

 

Well, I did download a checksum tool, but stopped generating the checksum after the first image. It just seemed pretty obvious that the checksum would be different on the bad images.

I worked with the file splitting function and decided to chop them into 1GB segments. This, combined with using the ISO format worked well.

This brings a question to mind: If the files are split up and strung across more than one DVD, which disc do you start with when restoring? The first, or the last?

I get the feeling that the UDF file system can do packet writing as a feature. When burning one of these images to DVD with Vista, the system will ask if you want to use a packet-writing mode or not on the UDF disc.

Anyone know if it's possible to take these already-created images and re-image them with file splitting so I can change them from one image to multiple smaller images?

 

Don't think TI is specifically capable of that, you could just temporarily restore
it to somewhere and make a new image