Drive Letter Access

Drive Letter Access, or DLA short, is a commercial packet-writing program for Windows. As such, it allows write access to optical media in that way, as you know it from hard or floppy ago. DLA uses this packet writing for ( re-) writable CD and DVD media and the UDF file system.

DLA is not compatible with Windows Vista or later. However, there is an official patch from Roxio, the DLA makes it compatible with Windows Vista.

Since end of April 2009 Roxio Burn is available. It is called the successor of DLA and solves the compatibility issues with Internet Explorer 8 and 9

History

DLA was originally developed by Veritas and sold to Sonic Solutions 2002. Its distribution DLA owed ​​to the fact that it came with an OEM software in numerous burners and was supplied pre-installed with various computer manufacturers. These are, for example, Dell, HP, IBM, Sony and Toshiba. In many cases, could be upgraded and are sometimes even downloaded a ( full ) OEM version free for these systems an existing DLA version.

Starting with Windows Vista DLA was either no longer supported or replaced by a similar product, such as Drag-to- Disc.

Technology

In order to describe CD and DVD media such as a hard disk or floppy disk, a technique called packet writing must be used. The ( re-) writable media are formatted first In this technique, after which data can be recorded on these media ( hence the name " packet writing " ) in the form of small packets. This makes it possible also to change files on these media, such as rename and delete. Similarly, files can be copied or moved successively to the media.

This technique is necessary as CD -R, CD -RW, DVD ± R and DVD ± RW media have no sectorization and therefore normally can only be burned in one piece ( DAO, TAO and SAO). After formatting, only those sectors are burned (written ) that have been changed. The file system DLA uses the " Universal Disk Format ", as it is the demands of optical media best.

To use DVD-RAM Packet Writing is not necessary, since DVD -RAM media already have a sectorization and this is the hardware. DVD -RAM media can therefore be described in principle no packet writing software. In this case, DLA is only DVD-RAM functionality ( up to and including Windows 2000) and the support UDF ( up to and including Windows XP ) are available. With suitable hardware DLA also allows the use of Mount Rainier ( up to and including Windows XP). Windows XP introduces support for DVD-RAM; Windows Vista introduces support for Mount Rainier and UDF version 2.50 up completely (even writing).

Versions

DLA is only available for Microsoft Windows. It is available in English only.

  • Version 4.95 runs on Windows 98SE, Me, NT 4.0, 2000 and XP.
  • Version 5.2 is the current version for Windows 98SE, Me, 2000 and XP.

Note: Most OEMs are officially supporting only Windows 2000 and XP. However, DLA itself runs on older versions of Windows such as Windows 98 Second Edition and Windows Me, and Windows NT 4.0.

For Windows Vista compatibility patch is required, however, to exist only for the sales and trial. The exception is a patch for the OEM version from Dell, however the Vista compatible Drag-to- Disc installed (instead of DLA to update ).

Program Error

  • DLA is not compatible with Internet Explorer 8 and 9
  • On Windows Server 2003 DLA can cause " Stop Errors " ( BSOD) called and thus causing the system to crash.
  • On Windows XP DLA may crash when RW media is loaded.
  • A known bug is that DLA under certain circumstances prevents ejecting media from the optical drive. In such a case, just restart Windows helps.
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