I have just purchased a Dell XPS 420 from PC world with Windows Vista
pre-installed.
I had previously backed up my photos on CD-RW which was a good thing as the
motherboard and hard drive died spectacularly on my last PC.
I have been trying to transfer the files from CD to the hard disk on my new
PC. When I insert the CD in to the DVD-RW drive I get several options to
transfer files:
Using 'Media Import' (part of Vista) takes forever...and I mean forever - at
last count more than 48 hours and still going to transfer about 800 photos
(approx 600MB). Shouldn't my DVD drive be a little quicker than this?
If I transfer the files manually using cut and paste this seems to be just
as slow and some of the files cannot be transferred.

Please could somebody clever than I am help me? Is there a quicker way? Is
this a problem with Vista, my DVD drive, the CD-RW or just inherent to the
hardware that I am using?

Thanks

Hi *Joe* I used to have the same problem but with XP, it seems to have
disappeared with Vista.
I tried copying a few photos a a time ( say about 20-30, maybe keep
pushing the limit up a bit) and then pasting, things would copy much
faster. A lot faster then the 15000 or so minutes that XP was
forecasting
Try it and let us know.
I know this isn't the fix you were looking for, hope it helps for now,
until somebody else has a proper fix for you.


--
dbknox

Thanks for the tip. This was my back up option and I think I'll have to give
it a go.
Seems a bit strange though that it takes such a long time. Is reading a
CD/DVD usually a slow method of data transfer compared to say USB, eSATA and
others?

Joe

"dbknox" wrote:

>
> Hi *Joe* I used to have the same problem but with XP, it seems to have
> disappeared with Vista.
> I tried copying a few photos a a time ( say about 20-30, maybe keep
> pushing the limit up a bit) and then pasting, things would copy much
> faster. A lot faster then the 15000 or so minutes that XP was
> forecasting
> Try it and let us know.
> I know this isn't the fix you were looking for, hope it helps for now,
> until somebody else has a proper fix for you.
>
>
> --
> dbknox
>

> Seems a bit strange though that it takes such a long time. Is reading a
> CD/DVD usually a slow method of data transfer compared to say USB,
> eSATA and
> others?
>
> *Joe*

Yes, but also, there are a lot of variables to consider , like the
speed of your computer computer and of course your CD/DVD rom drive, the
newer Sata DVD rom drives are very fast. Some people have found it pays
to check the DVD manufacture's site for newer firmware.
Also I don't know what you are running Vista with ( Ie: ram memory and
the speed of your CPU) there are a lot of things that will slow down
your transfers. I recommend that people should have a least 2gigs of
memory and over 2ghz Dual-core CPU for Vista. A good video card really
helps to boost the speed of your computer.


--
dbknox

Agreed...
Pentium Dual Core Q6600 2.40Ghz
3070MB Ram
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT
PBDS DVD-RW DH-16W1S

Any good?!

Joe



"dbknox" wrote:

>
> > Seems a bit strange though that it takes such a long time. Is reading a
> > CD/DVD usually a slow method of data transfer compared to say USB,
> > eSATA and
> > others?
> >
> > *Joe*
>
> Yes, but also, there are a lot of variables to consider , like the
> speed of your computer computer and of course your CD/DVD rom drive, the
> newer Sata DVD rom drives are very fast. Some people have found it pays
> to check the DVD manufacture's site for newer firmware.
> Also I don't know what you are running Vista with ( Ie: ram memory and
> the speed of your CPU) there are a lot of things that will slow down
> your transfers. I recommend that people should have a least 2gigs of
> memory and over 2ghz Dual-core CPU for Vista. A good video card really
> helps to boost the speed of your computer.
>
>
> --
> dbknox
>

> Agreed...
> Pentium Dual Core Q6600 2.40Ghz
> 3070MB Ram
> NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT
> PBDS DVD-RW DH-16W1S
>
> Any good?!
>
> *Joe*

*Very Good*, more then ample. Transfering "600 hunderd megabytes"
should be nothing for your machine to acomplish.
I don't understand why you would have problems unless the firmware for
your DVD writer needs updating. What flavour of Vista are you running?
I have read where installing the latest firmware has helped a lot of
new Vista owners. A word of warning, some people are afraid to attempt
this but I have done it several times in the past with no headaches.
'Dell Support - Technical Support, Drivers & Downloads,
Troubleshooting, Product Manuals and Order Status'
(http://support.euro.dell.com/support...n&s=gen&~ck=bt)

Have you rebooted your computer since the last time you tried to burn
your pictures this sometimes helps.
Maybe someone else who uses Dell can give us some insight.
Meanwhile Joe check through the "Drivers" part of this forum on the
first page and see if anybody has a post about your prticular writer.


--
dbknox

Are they just JPGs on a CD in folders? Try disabling your anti-virus.
Explore the folder and just copy the contents to a folder on your
hardware. You might need to go into properties and unmark read-only
once copied to the hard drive.

USB 2 can be bogged down by small files in large numbers. Try a SATA
or IDE optical drive instead. I use a Plextor SCSI-UW 40 MHz CD-ROM for
copying files from CD to my hard drives.


--
SCSIraidGURU

Michael A. McKenney
'www.SCSIraidGURU.com' (http://www.SCSIraidGURU.com)

Supermicro X7DWA-N server board
pair of Intel E5430 quad core 2.66 GHz Xeons
16GB DDR667
SAS RAID
eVGA 8800 GTS 640 MB video card