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I now have 2 CDRWs that were formated with the latest INCD and were used for backup for about 2 weeks. Now they are not mounted when inserted but INCD does recognise they have data on them (not blanks). email to Ahead goes unanswered and as I've read here it's not uncommon.

No other packet software or drivers that may conflict are installed. Running Win2k with lates updates. Any ideas?

wfs:

What is the purpose of your message?

If you want to recover data from your two discs, and your box has a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive as well, you may first install the latest version of EasyWriteReader from www.ahead.de and try to read your discs in this drive. Otherwise do this on another box with a drive that can read CD-RW discs (EasyWriteReader works fine on 98x, W2K and XP, barring driver conflicts).

Were these discs formatted to classical UDF or CD-MRW (Mt. Rainier)? What is the brand and speed rating of these discs? Did you use them in a single burner, or several ones? What burner(s) do you have?

Did you try several other discs to check that InCD operates correctly on your box? If InCD handled other discs well, this would imply that your two backup discs went bad. It is not uncommon that a single disc fails, but the probability that two discs fail at the same time is pretty low. Did you use those discs together in each backup session?

On the other hand, if now InCD can't handle other disc (and you should test at least a couple from different vendors), something might have changed during the last two weeks (hardware, firmware, software). Are you really sure that you didn't install any burning plugins, e.g., from WMP? You could extract the initial information section and the final "Existing Drivers" section from the Nero log file and post it here. Similarly, you may post the results for the dir commands given in S11 of the guide

http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php ... adid=60163

The purpose is to understand why I have 2 cdrws that no longer mount. The senerio is that I formatted a cdrw and used it as back up for about a week (approx 3 times during the week it was mounted no problem). The cdrw is a memorex 2x my writer is 16x. I thought that maybe the problem so I purchased Memorex 12x cdrws and formatted and used 1 for about a week - same thing, stopped mounting when inserted. I have formatted a second 12x and it works so far - I have used it twice.

All of this was on 1 machine with the same burner and no changes. My CD writer is an Optorite CW8402 48-16-48. Using latest stuff from Nero website and Win2k. I used INCD defaults to format so I assume UDF. I tried the reader - no luck there but I have not tried a second machine. I will have to get the other data to post this eveing.

I hate to buy a bunch of CDRWs to test the software. If there is a known 'good' brand I would be glad to try it. I have used Memorex at work with Direct CD for several years and not had any problems at all so that's why I bought them.

I would like to use INCD to backup some pictures and other data but so far I don't think it's reliable enough - at least on my system.

I'm open to any suggestions. Thanks

Well, now we have more information (after your first post, it was like shooting in the dark). BTW, I guess your Optorite is CW4802 (not CW8402). Optorite's site doesn't mention CD-MRW (Mt. Rainier), so I presume InCD didn't offer CD-MRW for your discs; anyway, you can check in InCD Property Sheet| InCD Page Settings whether you have the option "Format disc to CD-MRW".

I hope you were ejecting the discs via the InCD icon (not the burner's button, since this can be disastrous).

Optorite's site specifies 4x as the slowest rewriting speed, so you may say goodbye to your old 2x discs. As for Memorex 12x, I saw quite a few complaints from users of other burners. Maybe a firmware update would make your burner work better with such media (apparently 150E is the latest firmware, but you may search for users' reports). As for recommended media, check the Media Compatibility thread (Verbatim CD-RW look OK).

In general, you should try to find out which media work best with your current burner firmware; the role of InCD is relatively minor (it won't hurt to upgrade to 3.52.00b, but I doubt if switching to other packet writers would bring dramatic improvements).

Packet writing is very convenient for some purposes, but it is not reliable enough for primary backup (I use networked computers). Alternatively you may consider multi-session writing to CD-Rs; just search the forums here for advices.

You are correct I typoed the model - glad you could decifer it. I have read the other threads prior to posting and may wind up using multisession as you recommend. I'll try the verbatims also. I figured the 2x was no good which is why I got the memorex 12xs.

My wife has been the primary user and may have ejected them with the button which could be the root cause here. I know better but I don't think I imparted that wisdom to her. Didn't think about it till you mentioned it here. This is the main reason I wanted to use CDRW, so it would be easy for her to back up data.

I have already checked the firmware - it's at 150E and I have the latest INCD and Nero from the web site.

My apologies for my first post - I just looked at it again and I thought I had included much more info than I did. After all I knew what I tried As a Software Engineer I deal with problems all the time - nothing worse that not getting enough information.

Thanks for all the information and assistance.

It might be more politically correct to blame InCD rather than your wife!

Let me add that I wasn't trying to scare you away from packet writing. I have been using it for about five years without loosing a single file. For me it is more convenient than multisession writing when just a couple of files change between backups. But its unreliability shouldn't be ignored: I would never delete any important file from my HDD after copying it to an InCD disc.