I have taken a number of disks/ mini dvd's to vaious shops to have them copied onto cd's but they all say they were unable to play/ copy as they possibly have not been finalised. They say I should fin

you can't direct copy to disk (if you not finished the session) in 98% you home DVDPlayer can't play this. Try to make DVDVideo disk with the help of special program(Nero Ashampoo etc) Or maybe you get some soft with your camera (it will be useful too)

If your PS2 is made pre-2009 (has a manufacturer number less than 9xxxxxxxx) then you can use a bootloader to unlock the USB and hardrive to play "backed up" games and AVI movies.

You will need on of these things:
1) an original copy of 007 Agent Under Fire or an original PS1 game, to use as a "trigger" disk.
2) a original copy of Gameshark, SwapMagic, or CodeBreaker for PS2 (DL'ed copies wont work)

and you will need:
1) a memory card plugged into your PS2 slot 1
2) a USB drive

Now do this:

Load the boatloader ELF file from a burner "backup copy" of your 007 disk (using the "disk swap trick" on your "sensor-modded" PS2. I used ESR Disk Patcher and Apache V1.1 to alter the TOC values of the ELF file and "patch" the ISO file before burning, and I used the disk swap trick after playing level one of the game, saving, and then loading the "driving level" (level 2).

OR use SwapMagic or similar tool to load the bootloader. You can find Youtube videos detailing this process.

Install Free McBoot onto your memcard using the bootloader. You can use the "noobie package", use google to find this and put the files onto yor USB card. Voila! Now you can play AVI files or "backed up" games from USB or hard-drive, among other fun things.

Well the disk actually works on most standard CD-ROMS. If its cd-rom that is used in laptops (extremely thin) it should also work but you can always find a computer with one of these trays and then copy the contents.

If you can "play" the minidisc into the Mac, it should be possible to "copy" the files onto the Mac's disk-drive, at maximum-speed, rather than playing them in "real-time" mode.

The Sony MZ-RH1 mini-disk player allows "digital" file-transfer of the contents of minidisks into a computer, through a USB (not Firewire) connection.

It was only after I wrote to seek your advice that after reading the instruction manual again I discovered that the Fire Wire port on my Philips DVD recorder/player is described as "DV IN only". This will account for the fact that I have been unable to make a copy of the DVD onto a mini DV in a camcorder through the fire wire. It seems that I will have to forget about copying a DVD onto a Mini-DV..

Many thanks for your quick response to my question

David Bolland

It depends upon what type of data you want to copy onto a CD or DVD.
If you want to copy and play music in a CD player then it needs to be on a CD disc.
If you want to copy and play movie DVDs in a DVD player then it needs to be on a DVD disc.
If you want to backup data files then it can be on either CD or DVD discs (depending upon the amount of data to be stored on the disc - CD holds 700 Mb, single layer DVD holds 4.7 Gb, and dual layer DVD holds 8.5 Gb of data).
A DVD player can read both CDs and DVDs, but a CD player cannot read DVD discs.

Simple way if you have two dvd trays in your computer: just pop in the mini-disk in one tray and load a DVD+r, or DVD-r recordable disk in the tray of the DVD burner. Use the burning software that is available on your computer to "copy the disk".Other way:Just popin your mini-dvd into your computer and drag and copy the file folder (video_ts folder)onto your hard drive. Now, use dvd burning software that supports DVD images. I use the free ImgBurn program from: http://www.videohelp.com/tools/ImgBurn. (Remember, use "build mode" within ImgBurn to create the "DVD image" that the program will burn to disk.Disregard all the terminology if you don't understand it. ImgBurn is very simple to use. I mention "DVD image" because the conventional type of disk burning (copying documents, photos, etc. on disk) will just create a "data disk" with files on it. Video files burned in this way will play on computers but not on all stand alone DVD players.

What type of CD did you copy? Different CD types have different methods for copying them (Example: a music CD has multiple tracks to copy; better to rip them then reburn them onto a blank disk; a DVD disk has multiple data, video and audio files protected on the disk, a straight copy wont work). Based on your question, you tried copying a music CD. Use a program like Windows Media Player, RealPlayer, or iTunes to rip the disk, then copy the ripped tracks to a blank disk. All three of these programs are free, and there are tons of other free alternatives out there to do this.

This is the unfortunate thing with copying DVD's. Unfortunately when a DVD is copied only certail players will play it back. I can burn a disk on my laptop and it will play fine in the laptop and on my Sony DVD player, but my Samsung will not read it. This is why when you burn DVD's it's important to find a brand that is read by numerous DVD players. Try using the Sony disks.

Hope this helps.

HOW TO MAKE A COPY VHS TO D GO VIDEO DVD Recorder + VCR VR3930VD