Burning to Multiple Drives at once - What software is available?

[tom_schneider]

I'm looking for a solution to burn backups to multiple CD or DVD

drives at the same time - i.e. making multiple CD or DVD copies of

the same files, not "disk spanning". I've downloaded Alcohol 120%

and Gear Pro, but you can only COPY existing disks - you cannot

burn directly from files on your hard drive. I understand NERO

supports burning to multiple drives - are there any other options?

It seems like this should be simple enough to find, but I've wasted

hours downloading trials, only to find they don't do what I want

them to. Gear Pro, for instance, states on their website "Record to

multiple drives at the same time" - only you can't - you can only

record to multiple drives from a source CD or DVD, not straight off

your hard drive. Thanks for any suggestions.

[keith_kanoun]

I use Nero with 2 internal DVD-RW drives. It works great, and can burn from an image file. Are you trying to avoid Nero for some reason?

[Ed_Ingold]

Nero will drive up to 4 burners at once using the standard software. It is available in professional versions for 7 and 64 burners at once. You can copy from disc to disc, directly ("on the fly") or indirectly using an hard drive buffer. Nero will also let you create an image file, which can then be used to make multiple copies. I typically compile a disc from WAV files created in my audio work station, and use Nero to create a master disc or image file.

 

I have not been able to reliably use more than two drives at once on a single FireWire card, either directly, daisy-chained or using an hub. Either the drives don't initialize fast enough to keep Nero happy, or you get buffer underruns. Nero with FireWire does not really sync the burners, but sets up a small separate buffer for each drive. If one drive gets too far off track, it times out. The other drives continue OK, however. Using Plextor drives, I can run 32x for CDs and 8x for DVDs (more than 8x on any DVD creates quality problems because the linear speed increases with the track radius, but is constant at or below 8x with DVD+R discs).

 

Tower duplicators are cost effective if you need 4 or more simultaneous burns. Most operate independently of a computer and the best copy the source to an hard drive first. Tower drives need to be attended. Robotic duplicators use one or two drives, but load from a stack of 50 to 100 discs, and can run all night unattended.

[keith_kanoun]

I just realized you are not necessarily talking about burning from an image file, but I'm pretty sure any compilation of files from the hard drive that you can burn with Nero can be burned to multiple drives at the same time. There is a checkbox for "Use Multiple Recorders" that just needs to be checked.

[gluteal cleft]

With Roxio 7, the ability to burn an image file to multiple drives was added, you can probably use the feature for copying as well.

[jeremy_martin]

I used to use DiscJuggler for burring the same materials to more than one drive at the same time.

[tom_schneider]

I'm not opposed to NERO - I just thought this feature would be pretty common by now, and wanted to "shop around". Thanks for all your responses, looks like NERO is the ticket!