Live CD really a DVD?

[DataMan]

The "B" would indicate that it is located on your 2nd h/d. Is this the case?

-DataMan

[DataMan]

Also, did you download the "KDE" version of Mint? That IS a dvd iso and not a CD iso.

If that be the case, that would explain your difficulties with the burn-related process.

Again,

-DataMan

[Pierre]

160G SATA HDD (set as 2nd boot device)
CD/DVD RW (set as 1st boot device)

Your using SATA & not IDE - so thats probably why the CD/DvD is the SDa & the HDD is the SDb.

[slider]

Although the website indicates that the "Main" LiveCD is 688MB, after downloading it shows to be 704,662KB in Windows File Manager. Since this is over the limit for a typical 700M CD, I was starting to consider that this may have been one factor.

704,662KB = 688.15MB rounded off which is below 700 MB.

I would think that you must of had a faulty CD or maybe a device fault that occurred while burning?

In the future if everything else fails always try downloading a new ISO from a different mirror.

Anyway glad you got it worked out.

Welcome to Mint!

[DrHu]

You burned the .iso file to a DVD in Windows with Nero ?

If that is the case, is that windows OS able to burn a CD, or did it think that every media inserted into the DVD (dvd/cd) drive under the windows OS device manager was showing as a DVD only..

Ubuntu (9.04-->Mint 7, 9.10-->Mint 8) is one of those Linux distributions that requires a s-l-o-w burn speed 4x or so, which happens to be the speed of a CDRW media, which is one way of getting a slow burn extraction..

Most/all Linux distributions are live versions (run from media), I can't think of one modern one that isn't..

[Lantesh]

160G SATA HDD (set as 2nd boot device)
CD/DVD RW (set as 1st boot device)

Your using SATA & not IDE - so thats probably why the CD/DvD is the SDa & the HDD is the SDb.

He probably has the CD/DVD drive plugged into the SATA0 port on the motherboard, and the HDD in SATA1. If it were the reverse then the HDD would be sda.

What kind of CD media are you using? If it's not that great a quality then that coupled with the 16x burn speed can account for the failures. When you burned the DVD it was at a significantly slower speed, where media quality is not as important, and errors are less likely.

[slider]

Hi again txauction.

In answer to your original question to me

Is there really a difference between a CD and DVD iso, except for the size of the program?

The answer is no. ISO's are merely image files, kinda like an archive containing info files in a format ready to be burned. The only difference between a CD and a DVD ISO is the capacity/size of the images. Your PC detects this size when it is presented with the image, but there is no reason that you cant burn CD ISO images to DVD media if you want. I do it all the time when I dont have the appropiate media handy. However, the reverse is not possible due to the image size as Im sure that you already know.

If you really would like to test what may have caused you any problems, you can try some of the following:

*Download a new torrent > download a new ISO > try to burn.
*Do a direct FTPdownload of the ISO > try to burn.
*Download the ISO from one of the mirror sites that is closest to your location > try to burn.

If you have different results this time, this should answer some of your questions on what may have gone wrong the first time.

[Martin Rabson]

test test

[Lantesh]

Any suggestions on the better brands of CDs & DVDs, today?

I have never had a Sony disk fail yet. Every other brand I've ever tried has produced a failure at some point. I tend to have much better luck with -R disks than +R disks, and that has held true with different burners I've had over the years.

[slider]

Hi txauction.

In answer to your last question to me

Any suggestions on the better brands of CDs & DVDs, today?

I would have to say that the choice is purely a personal one when it comes to branding, but at the same time there does appear (at least to me) to be a real quality difference in the multitude of available brands.

As Lantesh has already listed Sony is usually pretty good. I have had very good results using Maxell, Memorex and Sony.

Funny thing is how different manufacturers media usually end up working quite differently in the same burner and also vary greatly between PC's. I believe this may be more hardware and media specific than software.

I would recommend to buy from a reputable media manufacturer or maybe several and do so in a very small quantity at first, until the media is proven to work well with all of the machines that you will use to access it. Then test it well in different scenarios from the types of file types burned to players, etc. Once proven, then a person can buy in larger quantities from that same manufacturer.

These are just my thoughts. Hope they help some!

[Martin Rabson]

Have a go with this free burning software. Uninstall nero first.

The interface is simple and the third entry listed in the splash dialogue that pops up is 'Burn ISO'
I have never had a failed burn yet with this software, I gave up on Nero ages ago too bloated!

http://cdburnerxp.se/

Thanks Martin. I've actually had this program sitting on my hard drive (uninstalled) for a few months. However, since I already had Nero, I never got around to trying it.

In any case, I went to the website to take another look at it, which led me to their forum. A quick search of the keyword "nero" brought up this thread: so is it better than nero?

Out of all the responses, the one from the "sys_admin" probably got my attention better than the others:
NO it is not better than NERO!! It has many issues ,compatability its the mayor one; but is FREE. Dependinng of what you neet this program for but if you want to get something complete with NO COMPATABILITY ISSUES get NERO...

Of course, most of the other responses on the CDBurnerXP forum said about the same thing.
So, I think I may stick with Nero in WinXP, for now... since I already have it.
Thanks.

Never looked at the forum, but not even trying a free CD burning software is silly. It may be just the ticket. Good luck anyway with getting Mint installed. you will get there eventually. Don't give up!

[efflandt]

Take one of those CD's you burned, see if it mounts in Linux, then cd to the CD and do md5sum -c md5sum.txt to see if you get any errors.

I just downloaded LinuxMint-8.iso last night burned it with Brasero from Ubuntu at 16x and it it booted fine. I am going to mail it to someone whose WinXP laptop is totally choked with assorted worms and viruses (Security Tool and probably related System Security, pmr0opn.exe, and something disguising itself as hpqthb08.exe that was using a lot of cpu time). So at least she will be able to use Firefox in Mint until I get there in a couple of weeks to fix her system (and stick Mint or something on it as a backup system).

But all my hardware is at least several years old (fully supported) and fairly mainstream, so I have not had any trouble burning CD's at normal speed (16x desktop or 12x laptop). Just make sure that you burn the iso to disk as image, and not as a data file (which I guess you are doing right if the DVD booted).