DRE: DVD Read Error (324) or (###) - ok, I think I've figured this one out...
Being a pretty technical guy, I did some research on burn speed vs quality, as well as the burn/laser technology itself.
With this error on the backup_launcher, there are 3 trains of thought and I would like to add a fourth:
1) cIOS not installed properly - make sure the latest cIOS is installed with NO ERRORS. It must go all the way through all 15 parts and end successfully. If you get any errors during the installation, you did not get it completely installed. Try again. Not having cIOS properly installed leads to a DRE error with "no cIOS". There are other threads that explain the errors you get. Most are related to the firmware being greater than 3.2, where Nintendo protected their core from WAD installs.
2) Bad (cheap) media or Bad Burner - use quality disks (Verbatim, TY, Sony), DVD-R work best, but DVD+R will work with book type changed to "DVD-ROM". Some guy mentioned to me that LG drives are no good. True, older LG drives were lacking in quality and features, but the new ones are top-notch. In fact, the new LG Lightscribe drive is normally used in comparison tests today. Just make sure you have a newer drive OR newer firmware on your drive. Most drives were designed for burning CD's for music, DVD video and games is a whole new ballgame (pun intended) and requires much more precise quality of the burn.
3) Bad ISO Image or Game Dump. If your backup dump image isn't good, it will never write properly. Make sure your dump is good before burning.
4) Make sure your burn set up does NOT go through a USB hub and never burn a DVD greater than 8x speed; for wii games, better at 4x or 2x. There is a great deal of research and testing that has been done to show that CRC errors increase on DVD's as the burn speed increases. Any speed greater than 8x is considered risky. Don't use a hub! Unless you have a $200 firewire hub, no USB hub (powered or otherwise) will carry the throughput required to burn a clean image. If while burning, you see your device buffer being overused, then this latency will cause something called "link refractions" in your image. As the laser burns the tracks, the tracks are designed to be contiguous, meaning one leads to another. When there is latency in the network set up, there are "gaps" created. With DVD video media, this is not so severe because a DVD player can skip through the gaps without visible consequences, but not so with a game image. A game image must be intact, almost completely because there are specific identifiable tracks that must be read in a specified order on the disk. When that order is disrupted, the DVD is unreadable or can lock-up midread. This happens often at the beginning tracks of a DVD, which gives the DRE. The number specified really doesn't have a lot of meaning, it's just the line number in the reading program that failed. With the backup_launcher code, this is usually 324, 349 or 369. All of these lines of code attempt to identify the IOS on the image. When the IOS can't be determined, the DRE occurs.
SUMMARY: Make sure the cIOS installs error-free completely. Verify your ISO image dump is good from your game (there are free utils for this, find one). Verify that you use quality media. Concensus is Verbatim best, TY, Sony good, others ok; I use Memorex without too many problems. Last, but not least, make sure any external devices are connected directly to the computer and not thru a hub; then burn at 2x. Try not to use your computer for anything else while burning to reduce risk of burn gaps. This should give you the best result. If you do all of these things, your games should work.
I just hope I can save some people some time and heartache I've endured over this.
Have fun!
