A Few Noobish Questions

2therock

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Apr 6, 2008
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I build my own machines and such but have never done much burning so I have a few questions. My machine specs will be below my questions.


1. I use Deep Burner Pro.
2. I have a Plextor iHAS 124 B
3. I copy from camcorder to HDD then to DVD.

When I want to duplicate a disc I get an option to do an ISO or Copy. The disc will be submitted to the courts or clients.I take it I need to do a Copy? If I give them an ISO they will not be able to open it unless they burn it? Correct?

I guess I need a short description of when to ISO and when not to ISO?

When I load a disc into my machine my mouse gets sluggish for a few moments. Is this normal for a machine of my specs?

Thanks

GA-EP45-UD3P & Q6600 - Stock Clock
8GB DDR2 CORSAIR XMS2 DHX - Voltage @ 2.1 (Mfg Recommended)
620W CORSAIR CMPSU-620HX Modular
POWERCOLOR AX3650 512MD2 Radeon HD
Plextor iHAS 124B
WD Black 640GB x2 @ RAID-1 Win 7 Pro x64
WD Black 1TB Storage
WD Green 750GB Storage
WD RE3 750GB x 2 in External Box @ RAID 1 Backups
WD MyBook 500GB USB Misc Storage
Dual Samsung 215TW S-PVA Displays

 
ISO is a file format that lets you create an "image" of your CD or DVD on your hard drive. The file contains encoded copies of the original files and folders on the disc in a single file with an ".ISO" file type. Using the ISO file, you can burn an exact duplicate of the files and folders on the original disc onto a new one. It's widely used to download disc images from the Internet (such as install discs) which you can then burn to a CD or DVD to make an exact copy of the original.

It's very unlikely that you'd want to put an ISO file itself onto a CD or DVD in such a way that you could open the disc in Explorer and see the "xxxx.ISO" file sitting there. Instead, you use a burning program to read the ISO file and burn the image to the CD or DVD to create the original files and folder that are stored inside the ISO file.

So in short - use ISO files to keep copies of your CDs or DVDs on a hard drive in a convenient format that wraps everything on the disc up into one file. When want to burn a CD or DVD, you can either:

a) copy an existing disc using your burning software, or

b) use an ISO file you or someone else created from another disk (minutes or years ago) with your burning software to read the ISO file as a disc image and burn it to disc as the original files and folders.
 
I tried a little experiment. I started Nero (I have version 8.3, from 2007), made a .iso file containing some text files, then opened it with WinRar (version 3.0, from 2002). I could view and extract the text files from it. From what I've read, there are other programs that can open .iso archives too, for example 7-zip.

I don't know if that works with ISO files created with Deep Burner Pro.

Edit: even if it works, I wouldn't recommend using .iso files this way. If you need file archives, you're better off with .zip archives because they are easier to use.

About your mouse becoming sluggish... yes and no. I have a Q6600-based PC too, with a Plextor and an LG. Whenever I insert a DVD (blank for writing, or some movie DVD), things stop for a few seconds while the drive reads. It happens with both my drives. My mouse doesn't become sluggish, but winamp for example starts repeating the last 2 or 3 seconds about 3 or 4 times, Windows Explorer shows an hourglass, etc. I've seen this hundreds of times over the past 4 years. I wouldn't worry about it.
 
Yep, there are several programs around that can read ISO files. In fact you can get drivers which will read an ISO file and make it look like a "virtual CD" drive on your system. And if you run a virtual machine you can attach an ISO file to the virtual machine so that the machine sees it as a CD/DVD drive.