What dvd writers are Fedora compatible?

[Stewart Nelson]

Hi Roger and all,

> I have an LG DVD writer, but haven't been able to reliably do data backups

I am setting up some systems using DVD-RAM for backup.  I haven't had any
trouble yet, but your comments make me very nervous.  Do you get I/O
errors?  System problems?  Corrupted backup media with no error detected?
Or is it just the samba problem that you already mentioned?

> I have like 4GB data to backup daily and I make 1 single big tar that 
> then convert to iso file

On my system:
tar -cf /dev/cdrom1 stuff
works just fine (with DVD-RAM media).  There are two disadvantages:
You couldn't easily read the backup on another platform, and you can't
put more than one tar on a disk.
 
> Should I split the tar in smaller files ?

IMO that wouldn't help (and you'd need multiple DVDs if you used the
method above).

You could format the DVD-RAM as a UDF filesystem, and could then
write multiple files to it with tar, just like a hard drive.

> can anyone pls post the mkisofs and cdrecord command lines that you are 
> using, or the script file you use for data backup for DVD ?

Sorry, have not used either of those programs.

> also I noticed that while Linux is burning the DVD I cant access the 
> samba shares. after the DVD is finished burning I get all working back.
> 
> I am using 2 HD mounted as master on each controller with software RAID1 
> configuration and the DVD is mounted as slave with one of the disks
> 

Try connecting the DVD to a separate controller (on motherboard or a
PCI card).

I am using a Matsushita (Panasonic) DVD-RAM SW-9572.  It can accept
RAM media in cartridges, which IMO will provide better long term
reliability, especially if your operators handle disks carelessly.

Like most DVD-RAM drives, the firmware reads the data after it is
written, and reallocates sectors if the readback does not show
a sufficient margin of additional error correction capability.
The measured throughput of the SW-9572 is about 1.6 MB/second
on writes, 4.0 MB/second on reads.

--Stewart