Burning DVDs & Backing up a laptop

[BreezyGrass]

Hey all -

 

Firstly, a long time since I posted last. The wife and I finally bought a house and spent the summer settling in - lots more to do! Haven't set up the vinyl turntable or got around to ordering the reissues. Looking forward to it very much. Painting my music room this weekend and going to set all my stuff up.

 

Anyways - having some issues in the technology department and thought I'd reach out to see if anyone had some pointers.

 

1) Using a portable harddrive to back up my system and maybe store some large files (music, movies, etc.) on there. Is that something simple to do? I have a laptop with about 200gb. (Dell Inspiron 1525) I'm not a computer wiz so I was wondering how that worked. I'd rather see if I can get some info here instead of talking and looking stupid somewhere like a best buy. I'd like to clear some space to record some demos for my band. Not sure where I need to go with it.

 

2) And I can't burn DVDs for some reason. Some of them work and some of them don't. Are they the cd's or something to do with an ISO? I'm using DVD Flick>ImgBurn and the discs don't play in the player. Some of them are in AVI and they won't play? It confuses the hell out of me. It shouldn't take over 2 hours to burn right? Any insight?

 

I know pretty off the wall questions but I thought I'd try here.

 

Now off to bed for the first day of students - brought them all the way to the 8th Grade! (I'm a 8th Grade Dean started with them in the 6th). Maybe gonna have to hook up the turntable tomorrow! =)

 

 

Thanks.

Thanks to anyone that responds.

[Analogman]

After Dawn is a great place to find answers to DVD burning questions.

 

I have not burned any dvds in a while, but as I recall, I also have some that will only play if I use the computer to watch them. I have an old cheap stand alone DVD player, so I have always thought that had something to do with it. I used Nero to burn DVD files.

 

I believe AVI files have to be made into DVD files before they will burn to a DVD, and thus, play in an DVD player. At least, for me that is how it was.

 

I you look up How to convert AVI files at After Dawn, you will find a lot of information.

[BreezyGrass]

Thank you soooo much. I will check it out. Its confusing and just you know - I needed a little direction. Going to go check out After Dawn.

 

Thanks again!

[BreezyGrass]

BTW...didn't even get a chance to hook up the turntable - mowed the grass, rehearsal, and then bed! =P

 

The kids are all right...

[okp greg]

Hey all -

 

Firstly, a long time since I posted last. The wife and I finally bought a house and spent the summer settling in - lots more to do! Haven't set up the vinyl turntable or got around to ordering the reissues. Looking forward to it very much. Painting my music room this weekend and going to set all my stuff up.

 

Anyways - having some issues in the technology department and thought I'd reach out to see if anyone had some pointers.

 

1) Using a portable harddrive to back up my system and maybe store some large files (music, movies, etc.) on there. Is that something simple to do? I have a laptop with about 200gb. (Dell Inspiron 1525) I'm not a computer wiz so I was wondering how that worked. I'd rather see if I can get some info here instead of talking and looking stupid somewhere like a best buy. I'd like to clear some space to record some demos for my band. Not sure where I need to go with it.

 

2) And I can't burn DVDs for some reason. Some of them work and some of them don't. Are they the cd's or something to do with an ISO? I'm using DVD Flick>ImgBurn and the discs don't play in the player. Some of them are in AVI and they won't play? It confuses the hell out of me. It shouldn't take over 2 hours to burn right? Any insight?

 

I know pretty off the wall questions but I thought I'd try here.

 

Now off to bed for the first day of students - brought them all the way to the 8th Grade! (I'm a 8th Grade Dean started with them in the 6th). Maybe gonna have to hook up the turntable tomorrow! =)

 

 

Thanks.

Thanks to anyone that responds.

 

In regards to the hard drive, they're pretty simple nowadays. You can get a 500 gig hard drive fairy cheap, and all you need to do is plug it in and it shows up under "My Computer" then you can just drag & drop any files you'd like to copy to it.

 

As far as the dvd's taking a while to burn, it depends on what format they were to begin with. Most movies; avi's, mpeg's, etc, will require converting to dvd format before they burn and that is what takes so long.

 

Also check out http://www.videohelp.com/ for, well, video help