Hello all - thanks in advance for your guidance. First post here.

I had a catastrophic hard drive crash over the weekend and had to reinstall Windows XP MCE 2005 (clean install)

I'm running the latest AnyDVD and the latest CloneDVD2 -

Movies will rip fine to the hard drive - but when CloneDVD2 attempts to write to new media - it errors out. (VOB read error) - this has happened 5/5 times since the rebuild on 3 different movies.

Before the rebuild I was relatively new to CloneDVD2 - but was approximately 20/20 on movie copies...

(it's not the media)

any insights into what's going on?

I take it you have defrag'd since new install?

If it cannot read the file from HD while burning, I would assume a defective harddisk or bad cabling or loose power connectors. Or a busmaster IDE driver going crazy.

Maybe a defective hard drive caused it to crash in the first place, that's why you had to do a fesh install.
Cheapest diagnosis as Tru mentioned would be opening up the case and making sure all the cables are secure. If by chance you have another hard drive, copy the DVD files to there instead of your main drive with the operating system on it, and give that a try.

Hello Folks,

It is not unusual that when coping a DVD that a hard drive failure occurs. Copying a DVD is a demanding task with the constant reading/writing of data and if a hard drive was marginal the DVD copying task will cause the failure.

There is a software utility program called PassMark Burn In Test (http://www.passmark.com/products/bit.htm) that will test your hard drive “under stress” to ensure that it is working correctly. What generally happens is that a defective hard drive will appear to work correctly for minor tasks but when the hard drive is used extensively like copy a DVD the hard drive gets hot and then fails. This PassMark Burn In Test software utility program keeps on reading/writing to the hard drive for an extensive time period to ensure the hard drive is performing correctly. I am quite sure that there are other similar software utility programs available.

Best Regards,
bjkg

It's a seperate hard drive from the one that crashed - did a reformat of an old drive and installed fresh OS.

It very well may be the hard drive - I've got a new one coming from Tigerdirect ... I'll reinstall on the fresh drive when it arrives - hopefully that will fix the problem.

thanks for the info.

Hello Folks,

Generally what causes hard disk failure is heat. Hard disks, especially newer ones that run faster, generate quite a bit of heat. You will want to make sure that this heat is kept under control. This is best accomplished by ensuring that the interior case has adequate cooling and ventilation and ensuring that the hard disk isn't rammed between other hot components. You also want to prevent excessive dust buildup on the unit. A Hard Disk Cooler is an effective means of reducing excessive hard disk heat.

If you do a Google “Hard Disk Cooler” search (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...er&btnG=Search) you will find numerous Hard Disk Coolers. Hard Disk Coolers cost from about 10 bucks up to about 35 bucks depending on how fancy you want get. For 10 bucks a Hard Disk Cooler is a good investment to prevent hard disk failure.

Best Regards,
bjkg