I am attempting to use the readcd command along with the cdrecord command to create an image file of a CD and then back it up to a CDR. Here is the command I am using to create the image file. readcd dev=0,1,0 f=/mnt/win_c/imagefile.raw And here is the command I am using to burn the image file to disc. cdrecord -v speed=2 -raw -overburn dev=0,0,0 /mnt/win_c2/imagefile.iso The image file is created on the C drive, but when I attempt to burn to disc, it appears that the image file is too large for the media. Any advice will be appreciated

Have you tried using readcd with the -w switch to put it into write mode instead of using cdrecord?

No, I have not tried using the -w switch. But what I did figure out was that I could use the below example to create an image and then turn around and burn that image to disc. This command to create image: dd if=/dev/scd1 of=/mnt/win_c/image.iso And this command to burn image to disc: cdrecord -v /mnt/win_c/image.iso dev=0,0,0 Also, I found that this command would work fine doing straight one to one copy without an image: cdrecord /dev/scd1 speed=2 dev=0,0,0 Well I think this is probably old hat to most of you linux experts, but perhaps another newbie like myself will stumble across this and find it useful. What I'm really trying to do is find a way to backup some of my DVDs. The above methods seemed to work find for CDs but did not work for DVDs?

Are you talking about commercial DVDs or ones that you have compiled yourself? You may need to run a kernel with support for files >2Gb if you plan to create large ISO files....have you tried a frontend program like k3b or xcdroast which both have DVD support?

Well, I tried k3b, but it gave me an error message saying something to the effect that k3b does not yet support DVD format. I looked through the software packages for Mandrake 9.2, but did not see xcdroast listed. I then downloaded what I thought was the installation for xcdroast but could not figure out how to install it. Actually, installing downloads as been rather hit & miss for me. If it's something simple like "./configure" I can deal with that, but anything other than that and I hit a brick wall. I don't really have any training with Linux/Unix, just what I picked up from reading Linux for Dummies. I have both types of DVDs that I'm working with.

I'm pretty sure that mandrake does come with xcdroast, it should be on the second or third CD. You should be able to find it with: $ find /mnt/cdrom -name "xcdroast*" It will be an RPM file which you can install with something like: # rpm -ivh /mnt/cdrom/path/to/xcdroast-2.1-mdk.rpm You should also be able to do something similar through the mandrake control centre (mcc). k3b does support DVD but you may have to get the right version, eg k3b-dvd-0.11.16-3mdk and you will also probably have to have the dvd+rw-tools installed too. Check out some of this page: http://rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/Archiving_Cd_burning.html I don't have a DVD writer so have never tried burning one myself.

Mandrakelinux 10.0 and later provide k3b with DVD support Ernie [ewilcox@buckeye-express.com] ICQ 41060744 Registered Linux User 247790