dvdisaster Version 0.72 | To the Internet version

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### Technical Questions

2.1 Which translations of the program are available?

2.2 Which media types are supported?

2.3 Which file systems are supported?

2.4 What does "SPTI" and "ASPI" mean?

2.1 Which translations of the program are available?

The current version of dvdisaster contains screen texts in the following languages:

| Czech | -- | upto version 0.66
| English | -- | complete
| German | -- | complete
| Italian | -- | upto version 0.65
| Russian | -- | complete
| Swedish | -- | upto version 0.70

Translators for other languages are welcome!

dvdisaster will automatically obtain language settings from the operating system. If the local language is not yet supported, english text will be used. A different language can be selected using environment variables.

Example for the bash shell and german language:

    export LANG=de_DE

If special characters like german umlauts are not displayed properly, try the following:

`export OUTPUT_CHARSET=iso-8859-1` (X11, XTerm)

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2.2 Which media types are supported?

dvdisaster supports (re-)writeable CD, DVD and BD media.
Media containing multiple sessions or copy protections can not be used.

Usable media by type:

CD-R, CD-RW

- only Data CD are supported.

DVD-R, DVD+R

- No further limitations are known.

DVD-R DL, DVD+R DL (two layers)

- The drive must be able to identify the medium type. Typically this is only the case for drives which can also write two layered media.

DVD-RW, DVD+RW

- Some drives report wrong image sizes.
  Remedy: Determine the image size from the ISO/UDF file system or the ECC/RS02 data.

DVD-RAM

- Usable only when written with ISO/UDF images like DVD-R/-RW;
- Not supported when used as removeable medium / for packet writing.
- Similar issues with image size recognition as noted above.

BD-R, BD-RW

- No limitations are known so far, but very few results on the two-layered type (the 50GB variety) have been reported yet.

Not usable types (image can not be extracted):

BD-ROM (pressed BDs), DVD-ROM (pressed DVDs), CD-Audio and CD-Video.

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2.3 Which file systems are supported?

dvdisaster works exclusively on the image level which is accessed sector-wise. That means it does not matter with which file system the medium has been formatted.

Since dvdisaster neither knows nor uses the file system structure, it can not repair logical errors at the file system level. It can not recover lost or deleted files.

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2.4 What does "SPTI" and "ASPI" mean?

Windows 98 and ME use drivers called "ASPI" to access CD/DVD drives. Windows NT and its successors provide similar functionality through an interface named "SPTI", but do still allow the installation of additional ASPI drivers.

> Pro and Con of installing ASPI under Windows NT/2000/XP:

+ | No administrator priviledges needed for accessing the drives.
- | ASPI does not map well onto the Windows drive letters.
- | Some CD/DVD writing programs install their own ASPI drivers. Installing another ASPI driver may interfere with the existing software.

> Which ASPI versions are recommended for use with dvdisaster?

Adaptec provides their ASPI drivers free of charge for download. Sometimes versions 4.72.* have difficulties recognizing drives under Windows 2000/XP. Downgrading to version 4.60 usually helps in such cases.

> Drive letters are wrong under ASPI!

ASPI drivers use their own system of identifying drives, which does not support the drive letter scheme of Windows.
In order to provide a unified access to SPTI and ASPI, dvdisaster tries to guess the mapping of ASPI drives to drive letters. However this does not work under all configurations.

The --list function prints out the current mapping of drive letters.

> How to select between SPTI and ASPI?

dvdisaster will automatically choose between SPTI and ASPI, deciding in favor of SPTI if both are available. Usage of ASPI can be forced; see the description of the --list function for details.

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Old documentation (V0.70)

Copyright 2004-2009 Carsten Gnörlich. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.