Trouble burning with HP 300e dvd writer

[a-alltheway]

Hello and season's greetings to everyone. I am new to this forum. I recently purchased a HP 300e external DVD+RW. I have been trying to make backups of my dvd collection. I have tried the tutorial by LAZ which worked great up until the last step when I go to write with BAO and it says I have 0 Megs free on an obviously blank DVD. I have tried other programs such as DVDClone and Nero 6 but both of them have trouble recognizing that there is any media in my drive at all!! Very frustrating...

I have tried different types of media including Imation, some generic brand, even the HP branded disk that came with the burner! All with no success when trying to back up movies. I know that there is a problem with BAO where it needs a wrapper to work with other non-Pioneer drives and Nero 6 is buggier than Nero 5.5 but they are all I have. I have heard other people say that they get to the burning part but have their discs ejected partway thru. Right now I can truly say I wish I can even get that far...

Is there a problem with HP writers? How can I make it recognize the media. When I go to My Computer and click on the drive with the blank DVD inside, it does read it as a blank disc and doesn't give me a message saying "Drive not ready" What is the deal?

Sorry for the extended message but I just spent the last 6 hours trying to figure things out. Please help and thank you in advance.

 

[bothanjedi]

I have the same drive and have successfully backed up a few DVD's using DVD Shrink.

Did you're drive come with the RecordNow software (part of the Vertias bundle)?

After ripping/shrinking the DVD to my hard drive all I do is -

click on the "HP DVD Writer" Icon on my desktop
select "Make Data Disc"
select "Make a Data Disc for Sharing with Others"
click on Next
add the VIDEO_TS directory and wait for the disc to bake.

If this fails I would suggest re-installing the software and drivers that came with the drive just in case the other applications you've installed have over-written the drivers.

 

[Moretunes]

I also have this HP burner and with the help of this site backed up a few DVD's using DVD Shrink3.1 and Nero 6 Demo. Which work great together by the way and I plan to purchase when the demo expires. In fact I'm scared to try anything else. Please reply if you use any different software. I'd like to get the best quality DVD video without all the extras.