first off i know like nothing about pcs, so sorry if i sound dumb, but i have a few q's

1) when i copy a dvd to the hard drive i copies at a speed of 1.5x when i ask for it to copy at 8 or 16x - how do i get it to speed up

2)Because each of my drives are small - they only hold 5 gb max to burn an 7 gb dvd i bought a seagate 320 gb external hard drive. So when i copied it on to it it was copying at 1.5 like normal but it stopped copying after a min then started up again - this aint normal is it. so it kept doin dat and instead of taking 50 mins it took an hour. SO how do i get it to go without stopping

3) when i used nero recode to compress it i did all that but it took 6 hours to copy. How can i reduce the time - i assume its the whole copying at 1.5 thing, but just incase

thank u all - all and any help will be greatly appreciated

These are commercially recorded dvd's i.e; Movies I take it Hawkey?

actually there tv shows i wanna make some back ups - as a few of my box sets ave gone missin over the years - so what can i do

What format are these TV shows recorded in?
Were they recorded via a dvd recorder or via pc tuner card?

They are originals. So i dunno what format - i heard that its legal to make back ups for home use only - right ?

For things recorded off the TV it's perfectly legal.
If your talking about the boxed sets, that's not even though you have bought them.
Say for example you have the entire collection of "Fools and Horses" you can't make copies it's as simple as that.
Regarding the burning don't rush it or glitches could happen, just leave it and do something else.