Re: Is there a way to backup large file ?

[scdbackup@gmx.net]

Hi,

> what's the simplest way to backup large mpeg2 files ?
> I have some that are bigger than 2 Gb...

... and you have to expect operating systems where
the ISO filesystem driver cannot cope with >2GB ?

How about a raw 1:1 copy on DVD media then ?
Like
  growisofs ... -Z /dev/sr0=/my/mpeg.mpg
(or an according cdrecord-ProDVD command).

I hesitated to propose this. But nobody came up with a
better idea and mine is at least simple. Since i myself
did not experience read-ahead bugs with DVD this would
work for me without padding. If needed, one could add
about 300 kB (or 1 MB, according to Volker) to the mpeg
file on disk or one could add it on the fly. Like
  (dd if=/my/mpeg.mpg ; dd if=/dev/zero bs=2K count=150 ) | \
  growisofs ... -Z /dev/sr0=/proc/self/fd/0

If you are still using scdbackup, the following might
be the most convenient method (presuming version 0.8.4):
  dd if=/my/mpeg.mpg | sdvdbackup -pipe_to_media  
(This provides blanking, padding and checksum tag.)

It remains to be tested wether mplayer/xine will
accept /dev/dvd as input. 
Of course there may arise a problem with the fact that
raw streams from DVD may be much longer than the data
which have been written to DVD. (Does MPEG2 recognize
the end of file from the data content ?)

For me MPlayer started to play a movie from /dev/sr0
(and issued a misleading error message when there was
no r-permission for my video-sandbox user). The movie
(12 MB) froze rather than ending when it was done. 
Probably MPLayer was reading 4 GB of trash from the 
DVD+RW media and would have ended afterwards. 
If playing the movie from disk filesystem, MPlayer
ends with "Exiting... (End of file)". So the movie file
might be incomplete.


Have a nice day :)

Thomas