What do you use to copy your DVD's?
 

Right now I am using the copy DVD feature in Clone DVD. Mainly because it is just a few clicks and your are on your way. To copy a full disks takes about 20 minutes @ 8x. (Copy the files to a temp file then burn back) I was curious what others used.

Wwwwwell........ dvd decrypter & shrink then burn with Recordnow Dx or Recordnow 7 .22

To copy homemade discs, stick the source disc in my DVD-ROM, stick a blank in my burner (both drives are on OPPOSITE IDE CHANNELS), and then duplicate in RecordNow Max 4.5.

For homemade discs that are stubborn and won't copy with the first method, or to copy a commercial release that is single layer, I use DVD Decrypter. ISO read, then ISO write. I use my BTC burner to read the disc, and the burner to write the disc.

For commercial releases that are dual layer, I can either copy it 1:1 onto DVD+R DL media in DVD Decrypter (create an MDS file with the ISO), or I use DVD Shrink 3.2 to both shrink and burn the disc. For DVD Shrink to burn, you must have Nero installed as DVD Shrink uses the Nero burning engine.

Alcohol 120% 1:1 Copy...

Rom Reader and DVD Burner are on differ IDE channels... so i'm good to go! :)

For discs under 4.37g both homemade and commercial I mainly use DVD Decyptor in ISO mode to read and write. I will on occassion use Nero 6 to read and write, or for really stubborn discs I may use CopytoDVD blindwrite program. The CopytoDVD program will sometimes read discs that DVD Decyptor won't. I use a Toshiba laptop with a 16X external burner. I do have a burner in my laptop but it only writes at 4X.

For commercial releases I use the following. DVD2One both 1.5.2 and the new V2 program, I've also use DVD Shrink (but it takes to long), I've been testing out CloneDVD2 and have to say it does a pretty good job too. I also use AnyDVD along side the DVD2One or CloneDVD2 programs. It is the best ripper out there. AnyDVD and CloneDVD2 are developed by the same company.

LS, used to say Shrink was the best out there for episodic DVDs, but I believe he has seen that DVD2One is almost as good. I will say that it is a lot faster than Shrink especially if you do the deep analysis that Shrink uses. DVD2One and CloneDVD2 can usually compress a DVD in anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes depending on your computer and the reader. The one consideration though is Shrink is free and it will on occasion read a commercial disc that the others can't crack. If I use Shrink I usually use the ISO feature and use DVD Decryptor to burn.

I just recently decided to test the above programs to see which is the best. I just got Serenity and Alias S1.1 and have burn them with Shrink, DVD2One, and CloneDVD2. I'll let you know. The part to check on is the action scenes.
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Yeah, if I use DVD Shrink, it tends to be on episode discs with DEEP ANALYSIS and MAXIMUM SMOOTH turned on, which is about 2-3 hours for a disc to copy. If it's a movie, or a disc that was only about 5-6GB to start with, or is something DVD Shrink pukes on, I'll use DVD2ONE, which is only about 20-25 minutes. I've even been known to do a full decompile and re-encode using DVD-Rebuilder with Procoder 2.0, takes about 10 hours per disc that way. The longer it takes, generally the better it looks. Why? Because that means it's doing a more efficient read/decode process.

All that said, I don't really copy commercial releases. The goal of this site is not to copy retail discs.

Nothing in this thread sounds bad to me. Lot of different methods to choose from. The only ones that are bad are something like Roxio or DVDXCOPY or even Nero sometimes.

I should have clarified, I was more curious about homemade disks. Retails are no problem...I was just looking for a faster way to copy my family disks.

I have kinda been leary of doing the 1:1 copies for fear of ending up with a bum disk, but I guess that buffer underun will elimnate that?

One of the things I was thinking of doing was to get a IDE to SATA adapter card (like this http://www.addonics.com/products/io/ide_sata.asp) for each of the HD's and that way only the burners are on the IDE channels....help burn errors from happening?

If you have a modern computer, with 80-pin IDE cables, with a fairly fast motherboard (meaning most boards from past years), and the drives are on OPPOSITE IDE channels, then you can do 1:1 on-the-fly just fine with no problems. Underrun is not even needed, it shouldn't be needed.

Your burner CANNOT be on an IDE expansion card, but your DVD-ROM can. In fact, that's what I do. My DVD-ROM is on the primary master channel of the UltraATA card (Promise TX2), and the burner is secondary master off the motherboard.

Dvd Decrypter

I use a standalone duplicator, usually. But it won't duplicate discs I got recently - I think more because of the brand of disc (Fuji) which the duplicator has balked at before, than any issues with the discs. I just recently got a second DVD recorder, a Pioneer 533HS, which has a disc backup function. Takes a lot longer than my duplicator, since it's disc to drive, then drive to disc, instead of disc to disc. My new laptop has the ability to burn discs as well, but I haven't really tried it with duplicating - too busy doing other things on the unit to dedicate it to burning.

Funny you should say that as I am having the same problem with my duplicators and Fuji discs.
The DVD Roms on my PC seem to read them fine however.