DVD Writing Using growisofs

Introduction

To save confusion: this is not a tutorial of how to create a DVD copy of an existing DVD, but a short tutorial of how to burn data to a DVD. DVD copying will be included in another article.

All this info is based on my Asus DRW-1604P, but should work with all DVD-writers.

DVD burning on Linux is easy ... very easy. There is a super tool called dvd+rw-tools (website), which focuses on "things like backup, archiving, data exchange".

Concept to DVD writing

DVD writing is somewhat different to CD writing. Each time your burn is it either as a new DVD image, or a multi-session track which gets burned after the last one. There is no need to first format DVD's either (except apparently for Virgin DVD+RW media). All you do is throw in your blank DVD-W / DVD-RW, and issue a very simple command, using the few tools that are provided by dvd+rw-tools:

To start a new DVD / overwrite existing data on a RW

growisofs -Z /dev/dvd -R -J /some/files

This will take your files, and use mkisofs to create an iso "on the fly" while burning it to your DVD. The option "-Z" tells it to start at the beginning. The -J and -R flags tell cdrecord to use the Rockridge and Juliet extensions when burning (supporting things like long filenames etc).

To continue a DVD (multisession)

growisofs -M /dev/dvd -R -J /more/files

The software will automatically search for the last track written to the DVD, and append the new track to it.

To burn an .iso file to a DVD

growisofs -Z /dev/dvd=file.iso

This will burn an .iso file to a DVD

Notes:

Ok, I know this wasn't really a tutorial, however on the website http://fy.chalmers.se/~appro/linux/DVD+RW/ there is a lot of related documentation regarding extra options, and troubleshooting if something should not work like you expect.

If you happen to get something like the following error messages:

bash-2.05b# growisofs -Z /dev/dvd -J -R files.test
Executing 'mkisofs -J -R file.test | builtin_dd of=/dev/dvd obs=32k seek=0'
/dev/dvd: "Current Write Speed" is 2.5x1385KBps.
:-( unable to WRITE@LBA=0h: Input/output error
:-( write failed: Input/output error

.. which is exactly what I had with my linux-2.6.10 kernel, turn off IDE-SCSI emulation! It seems horribly broken. You do not need it for burning to DVD's.