Well and truly Brassed Off ... RAW help needed

I shot yesterday onto 4gig cards with the the 1Ds mk2.
(Aproximately 250 RAW files at around 14/15mb each).
I load the cards on to my 40 gig, remote, storage facility ("GIGAOne").... so far, so good ....

Today, I try to copy the files from the storage device onto a DVD .... firstly, i use "Nero" to create a copy DVD of the files (hoping to fill about half of the capacity of the 4.7gig DVD) .... failed !
I copy direct from store to "my documents" ... all ok. I try to copy from "my docs" to DVD using "nero" but I can only copy between 10 & 30% before the whole pc freezes up ....

i) Am i trying to transfer too much data at any one time ?
ii) How do you yourselves create a RAW, untouched and "as shot", DVD ?
iii) Is there an alternative to "Nero" ?

Sorry to bother you guys, but i've wasted a whole day today ....

Any other associated help or tips would be very much appreciated.
Many thanks in anticipation.
cheers, david

I use Nero exclusively for creating my DVD backup of my RAW files and I have not had any issues. It probably is not an issue related to camera type. I have the body that you used as well as a couple of others as well.

Short of getting Nero to work, have you tried the generic windows software to copy your files and burn the disk. Have you tried reinstalling Nero. I always do my burning when I have no other apps running but not sure if that really makes a difference or not.

I always make sure to not come too close to the DVD capacity when doing my backups. I would leave at least 200k of empty space. In other words when you are watching your green bar on the status of used space in Nero I always leave it short of the full target. Again, not sure if this is going to help, I think it is some sort of conflict in your system and not necessarily related to the file size or even file type.

Does it always stop on the same file?
Have any hard crashes of late?
What OS are you running?
CPU Speed, amount of RAM, and Harddrive space etc...
We need a little more info

Also you should be able to burn right from your GIGAone, it's USB 2.0

thanks guys,
i removed nero a few months ago as i felt it was not working efficiently .... i could'nt then get the windows download to work ... i felt that nero was "blocking" the operation of the windows copying facility.

I have naively discovered today, that i cannot copy files to my external dvd writer, without third party help. Hence the need to reload nero today. Just a free trial version took nearly an hour to download on both machines .... this is surely not right ?

I have looked at Nero 7 roma tonight ... is this the way to go ?

I have XP Pro on both desktop and laptop.

where do i look for CPU speed, RAM amount and harddrive space ?
(did i tell you i was thick ?)

many thanks, once again, d

Right click my computer and should give us CPU and RAM
Inside my computer, right click on your drive and select properties, that should tell us amount of free space.
Lets get that info and we'll take it from there.

Also have you ran scan disk on your drive(s)?
Perhaps that is something we should do first

Turn of your screen saver and any powersave options you might have enabled.

Are your files on an external drive? If so transfer them to your computer first, or burn at the slowest speed possible so it doesnt run out of data to write. If the burner runs out of data to write then it will crash. Turn off EVERYTHING running you dont need running.

I am almost positive that your transferring from a cabled device that cant push the data through fast enough for your burner.

F3087 MAN said that he tried it both ways. Sound to me like it's time for some system maintenance. scan disk,Defrag, etc ...
Possible as well that one file corrupt and causing the burn to fail as well

I have been using Nero since I bought my first CD burner several years ago with no trouble at all. I bought my first DVD burner last year and bought some Verbatim DVD's recommended by the reviews I read at Newegg. I get about a 1/3 keeper ratio and am currently planning on switching to a different DVD disc. I have used this same drive and software to burn CD's with zero problems to date. Perhaps your discs are an issue as well.

if you are running XP make sure that you have installed service pack 2 or USB 2 won't work. I am assuming that your external drive is USB. Have you written to this drive before? Try different DVD media. Possibly a memory problem. Memory problems can be intermittent and drive you nuts. Make sure you reboot after each new attempt. That will clear any excess garbage out your memory.

I might also suggest skipping DVD backup and backing up with external hard drives. I have two (duplicates for data redundancy) and hooking them up to my computer is as easy as plugging in a USB cable and a power cord. From there they act like a regular hard drive, which means you don't have to worry about labelling DVDs, scratches, filling up an entire DVD or anything like that. They're also quite affordable these days, I would say the dollar to storage ratio is actually pretty close to DVDs as well.

It's something to consider anyway. I always found burning to DVD to be a pain in the ass, hence I switched over to external hard drives.

Nero needs a high speed data feed, much higher than the typical USB port and card reader can provide. If you want reliable burns to CD or DVD, copy the files from the Flashcard to your hard disk first, then burn them with the source being the hard disk. close any background applications you don't need. Also good to kill the internet connection via locking your firewall prior to the burn, though not essential with a good fast CPU.

many thanks to you all.
i removed all old traces of nero in the registry, loaded DeepBurner as recommended by a pal, and all is well again in God's Country ...
many, many thanks once again.
kind regards,
david