How to prevent DVD-R/W "endless reads" with AoA DVD Copy?

Question

I have a Windows 7 Ultimate machine with a DVD-R/W installed. It been working quite reliably – except for now.

I'm in the process of copying a series of DVDs using a program called "AoA DVD Copy" that allows me to read a DVD from my DVD drive, store that to the hard disk location and later putting a DVD RW into the drive write the contents previously read onto the DVD-RW. This series of DVDs I'm copying numbers five volumes. Volume 1 and 2 copied without a problem. Volume 3-5 all have the same problem: they start copying and get "stuck" – although I have copied the entire series successfully a number of times in the past.

The curious thing: once a DVD gets "stuck" the only way of stopping the constant DVD activity is either by killing the AoA process or by physically ejecting the DVD. From that point onwards the DVD cannot be accessed – when inserting it into the DVD drive, it starts to endlessly read and cannot be accessed in any way. I'm not able to reformat it either. I have tried disabling the drive, inserting the DVD, and then re-enabling the drive. Again, once if I try to access the DVD in any way (such as right clicking/format, for example) it gets into the endless read problem I speak of.

Answer 1

I have seen this in Windows 7 many times, W7 seems to go nuts when it cannot read data on the disc, I have found using a program like Ultra ISO to make an ISO image of the disc, then burn the ISO image to another DVD as an image works better in most cases. Ultra ISO does a better job at handling disc read errors.

Check your discs for damage or smudges that can interfere with reading it.