Family DVD back-up ** PLEASE HELP **
 

I would appreciate some help getting my head around DVD discs!!

I have all of my family home video saved and indexed onto DVD's, with the use of a DVD recorder for the TV.

I have an external hard drive for my laptop, and wish to back it up. How would be best to back up? I have just copied the entire folder (VIDEO TS) from the discs, but I have had it suggested that I might then have trouble creating a disc (with index etc) from that (should I need to in the future) - and that I should perhaps have created an image and saved it using NERO.

Any help much appreciated.

So,you wanna backup the contents of the DVD's right?
Do they need to be in any particular format or is it purely for backup so that you can restore any one of them at any time??
If so,why not use something like DVD Decrypter and take an ISO image of each disk,store it on the external hard disk and that way you can blast off an additional copy whenever you want!
I'd be a bit wary about relying 100% on a hard disk (They can fail too remember!)
If the DVD's are so important to you and you don't have that many DVD's it might even be worth blasting off an additional copy of each one (Call them MASTER copies and keep them safe)
Use the copies you have now on a 'day to day' basis and then you have two lots of disks as backups plus a copy on the external hard disk...
Does that sound right or have I missed your point? ;)

Good luck :)

Thanks VERY much Nick.

I have the day-to-day copies, and a set of masters, but also wanted to keep them on hard disk, as another 'just-in-case'!

The idea is to have them on the hard disk, so I can create a disc from them at any time.

I think I can creat an ISO copy using Nero, but what is it....?!

How would I then create a playable disc (with the chapters etc) from the ISO?

Thanks very much.

Once you have the ISO image, you can just burn it straight back to a DVD. There will be a menu item somewhere (and probably a button) in Nero to burn a CD/DVD Image. Just choose this option, slap in a blank DVD, tell it which ISO image you want to burn and off it goes.

Thanks. So is an ISO image the same as an image created when doing a straight forward disc copy?

Would other programs in the future be able to burn a disc using an image created from a Nero ISO image?

Would I be able to watch/explore the ISO image on the PC?

Sorry for more questions.......!

Thanks!

Pretty much. There may be some header information different, i.e. if nero create a .img or .nrg or .iso image, they are all pretty much images of the disk, with slightly different header formats that may or may not be readable by different software. You should be pretty safe with doing a .iso image :)

If you get something like WinISO (that's the one I use), isobuster or UltraISO you will be able to open the iso like it is a zip file and extract individual bits if you so desire.

You probably wouldn't be able to watch it unless you use some other tools that allow you to mount an iso image as a virtual drive so that it thinks it is a proper hard copy on a DVD/CD.

No worries with the questions, that's how we all learn ;)

An ISO image is a 'standard' image that various pieces of software can write so in theory yes and I very much doubt that programs that already have that support for ISO images will lose it.
Nero has built in support for ISO images.If you launch the Nero burning rom shortcut (As opposed to the Smartstart or whatever it's called) and then cancel the "New Compilation" subwindow.Click on the "Recorder" menu and then the option Burn Image you should be able to point to the ISO image and then burn it back to DVD and "Robert's your mums brother" as they say!! :D

Thanks.....but how do I create an ISO image of a disc using Nero...?

Thanks AGAIN!

It seems that Nero only creates its own Nero image.....

Help!

Use DVD Decrypter to create ISO images (It's free software readily available - Just do a google) :)

Thanks Nick.

I now have DVD decrypter, but cannot see how to create an ISO....?

Help again......

Cheers!

Lots of info on www.cdfreaks.com forum

Thanks, I think I may have it cracked.

I put the ISO mode into read, and all seems OK with the image. Only strange thing is that it creates the ISO image along with a .mds file???

Cheers for all of the excellent input, thanks.

Also.......
Might sound picky, but if I thne burn a DVD disc using the 'back-up' ISO image, using Nero, although the index is present, the title at the top of the chapters is missing.

Just a slight glitch I guess during the transfer....?

Cheers!