Nero 6 Recode introduces 'bug' that could wipe hard drive

by **Bhairav** on Thu Jul 31, 2003 10:00 am

Ripped straight from the front page of CDFreaks:

http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/7638

Scary stuff! An unlucky guy lost 20 GB. Hope he had it backed up.

by **cfitz** on Thu Jul 31, 2003 10:48 am

I would be leery of calling this a "bug" as well. Here is my take on it.

Nero Recode can erase all the files on your hard disk. But it only does it when you tell it to do it. It pops up a dialog if the destination folder for your Nero Recode output is not empty, and asks if you want to delete all files in that folder.

If you pick the root folder, the dialog asks if you want to delete all files in that folder, and you say yes, what do you expect to happen? Of course it will delete all the files in that folder, which means it will delete all the files on the disk.

This "bug" is mitigated by the fact that you have to make three mouse clicks after erroneously choosing your root folder as the destination folder in order to actually wipe it out. So this isn't an issue of a one stray click and your system is gone. It is an issue of the user not paying attention to what he or she is doing. You can wipe out your hard drive using Windows explorer, too, but no one calls that a "bug".

Yes, it would be nice if Ahead built in some extra protection that recognized when a user was about to do something stupid and asked "Are you really, really sure? This is going to wipe out a lot of stuff you may not have intended to wipe out." I admit that a danger is there, and anything that can reasonably be done to help alleviate it would be worthwhile. But people can't be completely protected from their own stupidity.

As long as Recode behaves the same way as Windows Explorer when it comes to deleting folders, then I think Ahead had satisfied their responsibilities. Of course, they may want to go farther to keep their customers happy, but people would not be justified in calling this a horrible bug.

cfitz

by **Boone** on Thu Jul 31, 2003 11:57 am

When the MPAA's knocking on your door because of DVD rips, Nero Recode to the rescue!

by **Ian** on Thu Jul 31, 2003 12:18 pm

I have to agree with cfitz on this one. It's not really a bug. It's like deleting all the files in a directory by doing a rm -rf * and then realizing you did it on the root of the drive.

by **cfitz** on Thu Jul 31, 2003 12:34 pm

Boone wrote:When the MPAA's knocking on your door because of DVD rips, Nero Recode to the rescue!

I love it! Great one, Boone!

cfitz

by **CDRecorder** on Thu Jul 31, 2003 1:27 pm

Ian wrote:I have to agree with cfitz on this one. It's not really a bug. It's like deleting all the files in a directory by doing a rm -rf * and then realizing you did it on the root of the drive.

I also agree; if the software asks if the user wants to delete all of the files in the root folder, it's not the software's fault if the user says yes!

by **dodecahedron** on Thu Jul 31, 2003 4:45 pm

Ian wrote:It's like deleting all the files in a directory by doing a rm -rf * and then realizing you did it on the root of the drive.

that's a good one too! :lol:

by **eliminator** on Thu Jul 31, 2003 4:59 pm

bad nero, bad !

by **Ian** on Thu Jul 31, 2003 5:21 pm

I see that HardOCP picked this news bit up today. Poor Ahead. They're gonna have everyone on their case about this "bug".

by **eliminator** on Thu Jul 31, 2003 5:29 pm

no mercy !

by **cfitz** on Thu Jul 31, 2003 9:06 pm

Here is Ahead's response from their support news:

Ahead wrote:URGENT INFORMATION FOR USING NERO RECODE V.0.90

Please note:

All data contained in the designated temp folder for Nero Recode will be compeletly erased before every new recoding operation.

Per default, the local TEMP folder is designated as the temporary storage directory for Nero Recode files.

Please ensure that the TEMP folder does NOT contain important data!
Before erasing the folder content, a warning appears which points out that all files will be deleted! This could result in serious data losses!
Especially in case that you choose drive "C:" as target or TEMP directory for Nero Recode, all data on drive "C:" will be erased after you confirmed the warning!

As soon as possible, Ahead Software AG will publish an update that solves this problem

cfitz

by **Bhairav** on Fri Aug 01, 2003 12:41 am

Good of them to respond quickly. One question: Has anyone used Recode yet?

by **cfitz** on Fri Aug 01, 2003 12:49 am

I tried it just to see if it worked. I didn't do anything fancy (it can't really do much fancy at this point), but it was able to compress a DVD.

Note that like CloneDVD, Recode can only rip discs not encrypted with CSS. If you want to back up such a disc are legally allowed to, you will need another program to first rip the DVD to your hard drive. Then you can use Recode to compress it.

cfitz

by **Bhairav** on Fri Aug 01, 2003 2:06 am

Thanks. I'm going to try it later today. Will report back :wink:

Nero 6 Recode introduces 'bug' that could wipe hard drive

Nero 6 Recode introduces 'bug' that could wipe hard drive

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