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Anyone have an ideas on how to copy many dvd's to disk effeciently? Currently we are inserting each disk individually and copying them then un-mounting them, inserting the next disk and so on. Ideally, we could buy a device with multiple cd-roms. Anyone know of anything?

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Seems like getting a device with multiple CD-ROM drives would be a bad decision if you're hoping to copy DVDs. :) – ErikA May 26 '11 at 19:08
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closed as off topic by ErikA, Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams, Caleb, pauska, Ward May 26 '11 at 20:52

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Don't copy the data from the DVDs. Instead, use dd to extract the images from the DVDs, then loopmount them later to get the files off them. This will defer the performance-killing seeking for each file until it's on the hard drive.

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Can you explain why? – Caleb May 26 '11 at 19:22
Explain why what? Why seeking on an optical drive is much slower than seeking on a hard drive? – Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams May 26 '11 at 19:24
Well as a matter of fact yes, but include why just copying the whole contents of a disk would even involve seeking in the first place. Remember this is obviously a relatively inexperienced user. – Caleb May 26 '11 at 19:28
@Caleb The mechanics of how a hard disk works are substantially more intricate than an answer to this question calls for. If you're curious for more information, though, feel free to check out the Access Time section this article for a good start: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk_drive#Access_Time – Hyppy May 26 '11 at 20:37
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Yes, they exist. Basically its a stack of DVD/CD drives in a single monolithic device. Check out disc-makers, they have a number of them. You could also get a crappy old full tower server, and fill it with cheap OEM DVD drives and then share them over NFS.

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The problem to this is you'll never beat the spin-up and seek time of a hdd with an optical drive. – bobby May 26 '11 at 21:13
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