Formating DVR-RW

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My CentOS 6 wodim tell me that it can only format DVD+RW. I have DVD-RWs. Even when I format a DVD-RW on my standalone DVD recorder, wodim still will not write to it. Is there a CentOS-6-useable mechanism for formatting and writing DVD-RWs?

14 thoughts on - Formating DVR-RW

  • According to the man page for wodim – formatting is not supported for DVD-RW.
    You might take a look at growisofs and dvd+rw-format. The latter command, in spite of the name, can deal with DVD-RW media.

    It is possible that the optical drive in your computer does not support DVD-RW
    media. The only way I know of to find what media are supported is to use K3B.
    If you go to Settings – Devices, you should get a list of readable and writable media for each device.

    Bill Gee

  • potentially stupid question here: Why would one format a cd/dvd?
    I’ve never had to do that, I just write to ’em.

    for what purpose or need would one format one?

    thanks!

  • If you have a rewriteable one. I am assuming (and we all know what that means :) ) that the OP has such a disk.

    Otherwise, I can’t think of another use case where one would format an unused drive, but there may be one.

  • Michael Hennebry wrote:
    Have you ever used k3b? It works very nicely.

    Now that’s a complete impossibility. I mean, where can you find a virgin who can (legally) give blood?

    mark

  • I write to RW media all the time without formatting it. I might “blank” it, but that isn’t the same thing. After posting I realized that one might want to use a UDF filesystem on RW media, and I suppose for that purpose one would need to format it, though I’ve not done that on a CD or DVD, only on USB.

  • results with xorriso for writing DVD’s and Blue Rays then any of the older programs.

    Nataraj

  • Hi,

    i am upstream developer of libburn. Nevertheless, the following is intended to be purely technical info, not advertising.

    Better do not use wodim with DVD media. It was forked from a CD-only version of cdrecord and got added not-so-skilled code for operating DVD. Thank you for flying xorriso. :))
    It has a cdrecord-wodim-compatibility mode described in man 1 xorrecord. Formatting is done by:

    xorrecord -v dev=/dev/sr0 blank=format_overwrite

    The native command mode is more versatile but demands learning new names and new rules. See man 1 xorriso.

    xorriso -outdev /dev/sr0 -format as_needed

    The mode “as_needed” formats what can be formatted and is not formatted yet. It throws no error if the medium is not suitable for formatting.

    Have a nice day :)

    Thomas

  • I have now. It can format or whatever it needs to do to write my dvd-rws.

    The last time I use it, it crapped out after writing, but before finalizing.

    How do I get it to finalize?

    Also, how do I get it to stop tooting at me?
    I thought that I had found the settings flag, but apparently not.

    There are legal ways to get the blood of some virgins who cannot legally give blood. That is an ickier subject for other fora.

  • No message, it just went to 100% CPU and quit responding.

    In any case, my immediate task is to get it to finalize the disk.

    DVD-R

  • Hi,

    Did you start it in a terminal window by a shell command ?
    In this case my local K3B (2.0.2) floods it with debug messages.

    So i need to get a DVD-RW into blank unformatted state. K3B offers me “Format and Erase” but not blanking. So:
    xorriso -outdev /dev/sr4 -blank all to make it similar to a blank DVD-R.

    900 seconds later:
    New Data Project -> fiddle in some directory -> Burn
    “Writing Mode” offers me “Auto”, “DAO”, “Restricted Overwrite”. But i want “Incremental”. Grrr. So i try to enforce it with tab “Misc”
    and set “Multisession Mode” to “Start Multisession”. (DAO cannot keep the medium appendable. So growisofs should choose “Incremental”.)
    I let “Writing Mode” at “auto”. Button “Burn”. CPU (Xeon 4×2) varies between 1100 and 3500 MHz.

    After 598 of 632 MiB have been reported as written, there is no progress message for a while although the drive seems to burn normally. This could be growisofs’ habit to fill DVD-R[W] up to 1 GiB at least. But the CPU is quite idle. (100 % never happens. But 12.5 % would be one busy core.)

    Then suddenly writing is done and verifying begins. Finally K3B says
    “Written data verified”. The resulting DVD-RW is indeed appendable. So this run was Incremental and not DAO.

    I import the written session and add another directory tree. In “Burn” -> “Misc” i chose “Finish Multisession” as “Multisession Mode”. After burning, the medium has two sessions and is closed.

    I could try “Writing mode” “Restriced Overwrite”. But that is the formatted medium state which is not available for DVD-R media without “W” in their type name.

    Could you try
    * whether Writing Mode “auto” and Multisession Mode “”Start Multisession”
    yield success in a first session,
    * whether the DVD-R is then readable on all intended drives,
    * whether the DVD-R then takes a second session with “Finish Multisession”
    * and whether the DVD-R is then readable and shows the files from both
    sessions.

    Have a nice day :)

    Thomas