a question about dvd burners

poopi · 04-13-2006, 05:53 PM

I'd like to instal a dvd burner to copy my dvd collection, will a computer with a pentium 2 333mhz, 6.4Gb hd and 64mb of ram be sufficent to do this task and could you please recommend a suitable burner. if my computer isn't good enough for the burner could you recomend a way arond it or what needs to b done.
Thanx.

**G10** · 04-13-2006, 05:56 PM

What O/S are you runnung on that box?

poopi · 04-13-2006, 05:59 PM

windows 2000

**G10** · 04-13-2006, 06:07 PM

Personally, I would say that there is some upgrading to be done.

I don't know how much hdd space you have but when your system tries to burn dvd's it will try to use your hdd as a temp cache and you may not have enough hdd space so possibly a bigger hdd may be needed.

Secondly, I would definately upgrade your ram to 128 or 256 mg (at least) as this will definately improve performance on your system.

2000 can work quite happily on 68meg Ram but I would def upgrade.

I would start on those 2 steps before you go further.

Just my take anyway.

Zap · 04-13-2006, 07:18 PM

I hate to tell you this, but I wouldn't even attempt to copy DVDs with that hardware.

1) You need lots of room because each DVD will have to be stored on the hard drive before being written to DVD. Each DVD is 4.7GB! Don't even think about doing this with anything less than a 20GB hard drive or larger.

2) Your processor may not be up to the task. With today's processors and memory (3.0GHz CPU & 512MB RAM), copying a DVD takes about 40 minutes to an hour. With your CPU and memory, you (if it can even be done) can maybe copy 1 DVD in 12-24 hours.

You will need to get a new system before attempting to backup your DVDs with any amount of success.

**cldnails** · 04-13-2006, 07:21 PM

A 6.4gb hard drive will not be enough for most disc burning. The typical type of burning will require you to rip the Video TS files to your hard drive, then you will weed out what you don't want to put on a standard DVD 5 disc. The reason this is done is because most retail DVD's are 8gb+, thus being DVD9's, while the cheap blank dvd's you buy at the store are DVD5's(4+gb).

Yes the DVD 9's are available in a blank media format, but it requires having a dual layer burner. Basically it just makes the entire process more expensive and if all your doing is backing up videos, it's probably not worth it.

Second scenario is the fact that you simply compress the 8GB down to fit on a DVD5, the resolution will be so terrible it will see like VHS. Therefore, you would be required to rip the files to your HD, take out the extras, and at times you won't need to compress at all to fit the movie 'only' onto a DVD5 disc.

Hope this makes sense, if it doesn't you are welcome to send me a PM.

Edit* Damn Zap, you beat me to the post button.