# Why does my DVD drive stop in the middle of copying files?



## Gregor1234 (Jun 3, 2004)

This has happened to me on at least three very different computers (all running windows XP, all updates and patches) with several different DVD from different sources (most verified when written) so it must be something in the OS or a common feature of drivers and not particular failure on a single system. My guess is that most people dont encounter this problem because most people dont routinely attempt to copy gigabytes of data from data DVDs in one operation.

I will open a data DVD and attempt to copy all 5 gig of data (or a sizeable chunk of it) to folder on the hard drive. The DVD will spin and the Copying window will open and will show progress for several minutes. Then, the DVD will spin down and stop. The Copying progress bar will be somewhere on the middle and the Copying window will remain open but no more copying takes place. If I am very patient and do nothing for several minutes (3-5 min) the DVD MAY spin up again and copying may resume (or it may not and will simply remain stuck).

This only happens when I am copying a large chunk of data. If the DVD data is broken into say 20 folders and I copy each folder individually, then it probably wont occur.

Ive recently noticed that this is more likely to happen when the copy operation is overwriting an existing folder.

Has anyone else experienced this kind of behavior or have any clue?

My impression is that the DVD is delivering data faster that it can be written to disk (the antivirus program may be scanning all these files, true?) and so the DVD drive gets way ahead and decides to take a break but then doesnt get told to turn back on (in a timely fashion) when more data is needed from the DVD.

What to do? (Sorry, cannot turn off the antivirus software.)


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## elee (Dec 19, 2004)

Try http://www.filesplitter.org/ for a utility for breaking a large file into smaller pieces for copying.


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## Gregor1234 (Jun 3, 2004)

I'm afraid, Elee that you've miusunderstood my problem.

It is not the size of the file but rather that I want to be able to tell the machine to copy the content of the DVD to the hard drive, go work on something else and return 10-15 min later and find it done. 

I could copy each file or folder one at time and that would work but that's not the point. I want to copy all or a lot of them at once without the drive getting stuck in the middle.


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## elee (Dec 19, 2004)

Take a look at http://www.cknow.com/cms/articles/why-cant-i-copy-a-large-file-despite-having-larger-free-space.html for a discussion of your problem.


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## bp936 (Oct 13, 2003)

had a similar problem with copying pictures to hard drive from DVD, same, folders are ok but not complete disk.
I copied folder by folder, had no other answer. But my guess is, that my computers don't have enough memory.

It always seam, that first everything is collected for writing, (it does not matter, onto DVD or drive) before copying starts.


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