Formatting DVD-R disk
 

My wife recently returned from Europe and took a bunch of pictures. A friend of ours would like a copy of the pictures on a dvd-R disk. One problem. I am unable to format this disk so that I can copy pictures to it. I am running Windows XP. Any suggestions?

Thanx

John

I thought most DVD's come preformatted. Have you tried to just copy the pics to the DVD?

Yes but it doesn't work. When I look at the property of the disk it shows 0 used and 0 unused.

John

John.... Sorry, I can't help with your formatting issue, but have you thought of just getting a thumb drive for the photos? They are very inexpensive, hold more data and can be used over and over.

For what it's worth, I have never had much luck formatting and using DVD's either.

good luck...

Are you able to write to other DVD discs?

The only problem I ever had formating and writing to DVD disks was when the drive was a CD/DVD Combo that was read/write to a CD but was read-only for DVDs.

It took me a whiile to figure that one out.

Probably not your problem. Just thought I would mention it.

Z

There are DVD-R and DVD+R CDs. Your disk drive may only accept minus R or only plus R. The later model computers can usually process both plus and minus. This may be your problem. I don't know. This is just a thought.

If you are having problems an easy way to send a disc is to create an account at Walgreens, upload the pictures and they will make and send a disc drectly to a Walgreens near where the person lives.
I do a lot of photography, the suggestion for buying a thumb drive and copying the pictures onto that and sending the thumb drive is a good one, just make sure it has enough storage space to hold all your pictures. It depends on the JPEG size of each pic.

Another thought......I have purchased some DVD's that don't have anything to tell you which side is supposed to be up. Is it possible that you might have some of these and might be trying to write to the back side instead of the front?

After many frustrating attempts to copy photos to disk, attach to email, etc.. I found that the easiest way to share photos is to upload them to Facebook. You can make the album 'private' so only your friend can see the photos, and you just email the friend with the link to the Facebook album. The link shows up at the bottom of the page with the album of photos on it. You just copy 'n paste it into the email. Your friend can then download the photos, make their own disk, or do whatever they want with the pictures. Your friend doesn't need a Facebook account to do this, but you do.

It works for me. :)