There are so many problems with your understanding of things as
evidenced in this thread that I don't know where to start.
First, if you have burner (ANY burner, CD or DVD), you need some burning
software. Typically this means either Nero or Roxio Easy {whatever},
although there are a few other packages as well. For DVD work, you NEED
the latest version (6.x) of Nero, or version 6 or 7 of Roxio, although
in both cases (the 5.x versions) an earlier version claimed to support
DVD burning, it didn't work right.
With regard to CDs, there are two totally different ways to burn CDs.
The first way, "ISO Standard", is that to burn a CD you open a burning
program EXPLICITLY, create a "layout" and explicitly burn it. The 2nd
way is "packet writing" or "UDF", which is supported by separate
components of the various burning packages ("Direct CD", "In-CD",
"Drag-and-Drop").
UDF/Packet writing (which from hereon I will refer to as UDF) requires
that the media be preformatted (sometimes done automatically and
semi-transparently), and it's intended to be used only with "eraseable"
media (-RW) media.
I'm going to make a suggestion here which is controversial, but I stand
by it: Don't EVER use UDF media burning. Don't even install the
software to support it ("Direct CD", "In-CD", "Drag-and-Drop"), which is
installed by default but which is still an option.
UDF discs are, by definition, NOT "ISO Standard". They present lots of
potential problems on playback, and there is no assurance that a UDF
media can ever be read on a system other than that on which it was
recorded, or on a system that doesn't have the same software with which
it was recorded. Stick to "ISO Standard" media, which can be read and
used anywhere. Also, to install UDF, you must install drivers which are
running constantly in the background, and which introduce some
compatability problems with use of the drives for burning by software
other than the particular package that those drivers came with.
I bring this up because in your original post you said "DriveImage
rejects a formatted DVD-RW ....".
The fact that you even mentioned "formatted" optical media suggests that
you are using, or trying to use, some form of UDF recording; "ISO"
recording uses blank media straigh out of the box, and does not involve
any type of preformatting whatsoever.
I'm unclear as to whether or not UDF even applies to DVDs, but, in any
case, when Drive Image (and any other "quality" program) tries to write
to optical media, it's trying to do ISO-standard recording, NOT UDF
format recording. It doesn't want, and won't accept, UDF "formatted"
media, it wants pure blank, never written to media (or, in the case of
eraseable media, freshly erased media).
UDF was an attempt to make optical recording "easy" for "the masses" and
to hide all of the complexity and the need to actually use a "burning
program", but result is non-standard, non-ISO media that, really, I
believe that you are just better off avoiding all together.
Windows XP has a very rudimentary built-in burning capability. It's
very limited, when you use it, a copy is made of the material to be
burned, and when you do the burn, this material is burned (ISO) to the
disc. Microsoft uses the Roxio code, and it is "ISO", but it is so
rudimentary that it, too, is really best avoided.
On the subject of DVD burning, there is DVD "data" burning, and there is
DVD "video" burning. They are VERY different, also. Version 6 of
either Nero or Roxio will do data burning just fine, but while they both
will do some rudimentary video creation, if you are talking about making
video DVDs, you probably want a dedicated video editing and
content-creation program (most of which also do their own burning). I
think that some of the answers that you have gotten reflect confusion
over this, that is, they apply to video DVD burning, when I think that
your inquiry relates only to data-DVDs (e.g. using a DVD as simply a
very large CD-R).
Two other points:
In general, you can't "add" more data to a recrordable data DVD the way
that you can with a CD-R. There is no widely generalized multi-session
the way that there is with CDs. There are some differences here between
the two formats (+ and -) and between different drives, and the burning
programs may "seem" to let you do this, but if you do, don't expect to
be able to read all of the data on the DVD on just any system that you
put the DVD into. It won't work.
Finally, for both Roxio and Nero, it truly is critically important that
you go online and apply the updates to the burning programs. There have
been a lot of new developments and quite a few bug fixes (for both Roxio
and Nero), and more so than with almost any other program other than
anti-virus programs, keeping these updated is absolutely essential.
I hope that this helps.
