slow access to dvd containing large number of files

[jjohnsoncantell]

Greetings,

 

Ive been collecting various photos over the years of family, trips, holidays etc and have a large number of photos ive burned to dvd. Lots of these have rather long explanatory file names but still within 255 char limit (including path name) and are grouped in folders by year. I have problems accessing these pictures through explorer as i will explain below.

 

I burnt them to disk as a udf dvd no problem, the data is there and verifies properly. When I go to open the newly burnt disc and go into one of the folders im hit by a delay which can only be described as aeons before it will show me the contents. During this time its spinning away quite hapilly, the explorer toolbar is filling up and this can sometimes go on for two or three minutes before its done and i get my directory list. This happens for each folder i access too. Tried burning at a slower speed but still have this huge lag. I think the largest folder contains 3,000 and the smallest 500 but i still have this lengthy delay no matter how many there are.

 

Any suggestions as to what could be causing this? Surely explorer shouldnt be taking minutes to display a reasonably small number of files and im only looking in list view, not thumbnail view either.

 

Thanks

James

[Geoff]

You're complaining that a sequentially read optical disk spinning via mechanical means when reading thousands of files spread over the disk is slow? Sorry, can't do much about the laws of physics.

 

I'd suggest you buy a 4Gb flash usb stick and put your pictures on that, then keep the DVD somewhere safe and dark as a backup for when, not if, your usb stick gets eaten by the dog/stolen/washed.

[jjohnsoncantell]

There just seemed to be a limit i hit, not sure when, where the files went from displaying pretty much straight away when i went into the folder to suddenly hanging explorer and taking ages to access. I was curious if id burnt the disc using incorrect settings maybe as that didnt explain such a sudden change. I burned multiple copies with the same effect. I could understand if over time it got slower the more i added but as i said it was if id reached some sort of limit. The only other change i can think that happened was having to use dvd9 dual layer discs which are plus instead of dvd5 which are minus. I know they store data differently and that may have caused it?

 

Good point on the memory stick idea though...

Edited November 30, 2012 by jjohnsoncantell