[SOLVED] Where is my DVD drive?

[ricomoss]

What is the path to my DVD drive? As I understand it the drive may not show up if there isn't a DVD/CD in it. Is that right? I may need to mount it manually?

I've got some DVDs with a ton of files on them that I'd like to transfer to my HDD but I can't seem to find the path to the DVD drive when I insert the DVD. I know the drive is recognized by Kubuntu (I just finished burning a .iso with it).

Ultimately what I'd like is to insert a DVD/CD and open a terminal and type:

user@host:~/$ cp -r /path/to/dvd/ ~/storage

...and have everything just work. Is such a thing possible? If so, anyone know how I might accomplish this?

Thanks in advance for the help.

[Snowhog]

Re: Where is my DVD drive?

When you insert a CD/DVD, it will be mounted automatically. If you open Dolphin you'll see it on the left under Places. Click on it and you'll see that it gets mounted under /media/

[ricomoss]

Re: Where is my DVD drive?

Sadly this is not the case. I installed Kubuntu 10.10 about 2 hours ago and have done little configuration (none that I think would effect the DVD ROM).

If I insert a DVD and open Dolphin I see Home, Network, Root, Trash, and 2 HDD I have. That's it, no DVD anything.

I've also checked under /media and all I see is:

ricomoss@fenster:/$ ls /media/
floppy floppy0

I know Kubuntu knows the DVD is there because when I put it in I get a popup from Available Devices. It brings up K3b by default. All this, and I still can't find where it's mounted (or verify that it actually is mounted).

Any other suggestions?

[Snowhog]

Re: Where is my DVD drive?

DVDs require non-free codecs in order to be read.

Open a console, then copy and paste the following and press enter:

sudo wget --output-document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/$(lsb_release -cs).list && sudo apt-get --quiet update && sudo apt-get --yes --quiet --allow-unauthenticated install medibuntu-keyring && sudo apt-get --quiet update

This will add the medibuntu repository and key. This repository contains the non-free codecs you will need. Then, while still in the cosole, copy and paste the following and press enter:

sudo apt-get install libdvdcss2

This installs the required codec that allows playing of encrypted DVDs. Then copy and paste the following and press enter:

sudo apt-get install libdvdread4

It might already be installed from the prior, but if it isn't, this will install it. Then copy and paste the following and press enter:

sudo apt-get install w32codecs

This installs the codecs necessary to play certain Windows formats, Real, and Apple Quicktime which do not have native codecs under Linux. If you have a 64-bit CPU, replace w32codecs with w64codecs above.

[ricomoss]

Re: Where is my DVD drive?

I'm sorry, I should have been more clear. I'm not trying to watch movies or anything. This is just a simple data DVD+R. When I reinstalled my OS I backed up a lot of stuff on DVD+Rs so that I could easily get it back once I got the new OS up and running. Now I can't seem to access my DVDs.

[Snowhog]

Re: Where is my DVD drive?

Okay. We need to know details about your PC and it's hardware. Desktop or Laptop? If desktop, does it have two optical drives?

[ricomoss]

Re: Where is my DVD drive?

What details will you need?

Desktop. A single DVD-RW drive (LG).

OS - Kubuntu 10.10
DVD - TDK DVD+R

What more do you think you'll need?

[Pillage Idiot]

Re: Where is my DVD drive?

I know Kubuntu knows the DVD is there because when I put it in I get a popup from Available Devices. It brings up K3b by default. All this, and I still can't find where it's mounted (or verify that it actually is mounted).

Where it pops up and shows K3B as an option, click on that and it will expand to show more options.
Pick "Open with file manager" and it will open in Dolphin.
It should also show the disc name in the places panel.

If the disc is blank then K3B is the only option presented and the disc does not show up in Dolphin.
It will only mount if a recognisable file system is present. The same goes for hard drives.

From what you have said so far I would surmise one of two things have happened, when you wrote the data to the discs it may not have actually written at all, or the package that you wrote them with has written them in a non standard file structure that the system does not recognise.

If you flip the disc so you can see the data side and hold it so that you are looking at it from an angle you should be able to see a gradation in colour and texture where the data has been written, looking a bit like an old vinyl record from the centre out.
If it is clean and shiny with no perceptible difference across the face of the disc then it is empty.
In this case then all I could say is that you would be one of many people who have thought that the data had written when it had in fact not.

If this is the case then I would suggest that you stop using this hard drive immediately, install an OS onto another hard drive and start looking at how to recover the data that you have lost. If the partition was NTFS or FAT previously then this should not be hard.

If you can see that the data has been written then it would be good if you could tell us what program you used to write the discs with.
Does it have any weird file system options?

[ricomoss]

Re: Where is my DVD drive?

Sorry, but no such luck. When I click on the Available Devices it only brings up K3b - no option to open Dolphin.

I know the disc has data on it as I pulled all of it off onto my wife's laptop as a secondary backup (I was afraid something like this would happen).

So, I'm to assume the disc has been written with a non-standard file structure? Lame.

I used the Windows Vista default DVD writing software. I put in an empty DVD, pulled files from a folder to the DVD then burned them. I didn't purposefully select any strange way of burning them (unless Vista does this by default).

If this is the case then I suppose my next question is: How can I burn info from Vista to a DVD such that I can read it in Kubuntu?

Thanks, guys.

[ricomoss]

[SOLVED] Re: Where is my DVD drive?

Problem solved! Sorry, I guess I left out some pertinent information about my problem. It turns out that I have the info on my HDD from a Windows install. I didn't know that Linux would see a partition that was formated NTFS and has another OS on it.

I opened Dolphin, noticed a few partitions that were the size of my Windows stuff and thought I'd snoop around. To my delight a simple

ricomoss@fenster:~$ sudo cp -r /media/disk/backup/* /storage

did the trick!

I appreciate the help guys...it looks like from now on I'll be doing all my storage/burning from Linux. haha

[Pillage Idiot]

Re: [SOLVED] Where is my DVD drive?

Glad you found the data.
As Microsoft is notorious for refusing to follow standards I would not be surprised if it was something to do with the way the Vista tools wrote the disc.

FYI, Dolphin has a really cool split function that allows you to navigate two different directories at the same time.
This makes it very easy to drag and drop files to where you want them to go.

Not that I don't commend you for using the command line, but you do need to be very careful to make sure that your paths are 100% correct or you can end up making yourself more work.

[ricomoss]

Re: [SOLVED] Where is my DVD drive?

I actually prefer using the command line. I have a VERY unorthodox knowledge of Linux. I have been using it at work for the last 5 years but know very little about drivers, mounting, etc because we have a system admin who maintains all that for us. I can script, code, use svn, etc in Linux pretty well.

My dusty corners seem to be what most people learn first.