Re: [gentoo-user] new machine : DVD drive

[Michael Mol]

On Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 7:19 AM, Mick <michaelkintzios@×××××.com> wrote:
> On Monday 20 Aug 2012 11:21:39 Philip Webb wrote:
>> Apologies for the elementary questions, but I'm a bit slow to change
>> (smile).
>>
>> In designing my new machine, I assumed that I would simply transfer
>> the CD drive from the existing box to the new one,
>> but (1) the new mobo seems to have only SATA sockets
>> & (2) CD drives seem to be going the same way as diskette drives,
>> so I'm now planning to buy a new DVD drive & to start using DVDs.
>> I wb using them only for back-ups, not playing music or videos.
>>
>> This looks like a good enough item :
>>   ASUS DRW-24B1ST 24x SATA Black R 48x W 8x OEM : CAD 24,99
>>
>> Can anyone answer a few rather basic questions ?
>
> I'll try.
>
>> (1) do I need to configure the kernel to find the drive ?
>
> Yes.  As a minimum have a look at BLK_DEV_SR and BLK_DEV_SR_VENDOR.  You may
> also need SCSI_PROC_FS for legacy applications.  The AHCI drivers would
> probably be enabled for your hard drive SATA controller anyway.
>
>
>> (2) what software do Gentoo users use to read/write DVDs ?
>
> From cdrecord man page (app-cdr/cdrtools):
>
> "NAME
>        cdrecord - record audio or data CD, DVD or BluRay"
>
> and of course for a GUI front you can use k3b if you use KDE applications.  If
> you're not using KDE consider xfburn.  Not sure about Gnome applications like
> Brasero that is shipping with Mint/Ubuntu these days.

Brasero is a fine tool, and my tool of choice on Gentoo. (I don't use
a full GNOME or KDE desktop; Brasero works great without either.)

>
>
>> (3) are there rewritable DVDs, as there used to be rewritable CDs ?
>> -- among the specs are much slower speeds labelled 'RW'.
>
> Yes, +RW, -RW, but don't know much more on this other than older DVD writers
> would only do one format not another and if you didn't pay attention to the
> specification/limitations of your hardware you could end up buying the wrong
> type of DVDs.  Someone more experienced on recording media could answer this
> better.

Almost all of this stuff settled a little under a decade ago, but in
the beginning there was just the DVD. The DVD had a field in its
metadata called "book type", which was supposed to tell the DVD player
what kind of DVD it was. Was it a manufacturer-pressed disc? Was it a
burned disc? Was it something else? In order to master DVDs, you had
to get specially-licensed and controlled master discs, drives and
software which would allow you to write to that book type field.

DVD-R came out, and pressures from Hollywood dictated that this DVD-R
format hardcode a value into that Book Type field that declared the
disc as a burnable disc. This way, people who tried copying or burning
movies and the like would have these discs rejected by DVD players.

Some DVD players wouldn't play back movies from DVD-R discs. Some DVD
players wouldn't even acknowledge them; as far as these players were
concerned, that particular value in the 'book type' field was still
'reserved', so any disc that used it was invalid.

Along comes the DVD+R format. The DVD+R format has some variances in
*how* data is represented on disc, but to the player that doesn't know
any better, it looks just like any other DVD. The big difference DVD+R
brought was that the 'book type' field was burnable on any drive which
was capable of burning DVD+R media, and a disc appropriately burned
would play in any home DVD player as though it were a pressed disc.
(Yay, we can has home-recorded movies again!)

Both DVD+R and DVD-R discs are sold, but I only ever buy DVD+R discs;
as far as I can tell, playback works in everything, and just about any
recorder will record to them. I have to think that the DVD-R discs are
sold only because there are still some ancient burners out there.

When in doubt, go with DVD+R.

>
>
>> (4) anything else I sb aware of ?
>
> Given your adoption rate of new technology I suggest you consider buying a
> BluRay player if not recorder, because I don't know how long it will be before
> DVDs become obsolete too.  Unfortunately BluRay devices were out of my price
> range last time I bought hardware to justify paying the extra, so I can't
> recommend any.

There's something to this; a single-layer DVD only holds 4.7GB of
data. I carry around more rewriteable storage capacity than that in my
pants. (Literally; I have a pelican case full of SD and micro-SD
cards, for photography purposes.)

If this is a backup solution, it's probably better to look at blu-ray
or (even better) modern tape drive solutions. DVDs are kinda small by
modern storage standards.

-- 
:wq