CDRW in CDR drive

[J McRae]

I have a quick question...all things equal, if I used a CDRW cd in a CDR drive to copy a file, could I take the cd and use it in a cdrw drive and modify the file? (my computer at home is CD-R; my computer at work is CD-RW)

Thanks for your input!

Judi

[Paleo Pete]

Nope. Once you finish burning a CD with a CD-R it is finalized, you can't modify it. I'm not even sure the CD-RW media would work, I think it has to be formatted first, which the CD-R can't do. If it can write to a CD-RW disk at all, it can't format it so that it is re-writable anyway, and it would also be automatically finalized.

If you want it to be reusable you will have to burn it on a CD-RW drive and make sure it is not finalized when the initial burn is finished.

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[J McRae]

Point taken! Thanks for your time.

Judi

[Fruss Tray Ted]

Are you saying that there's two types of CD burners? I was not aware and thought they were ALL CD-RW's.

Also, a CD-RW can be closed AND can be written to again after a re-opening but you lose a bit of space by the erasing of mthe closure. At lest that's what my instructions say, I've yet to try it.

[skhips]

If you go advanced options on most CD burning software you can choose to

a: Close the session -(old CD-ROMS will not be able to read the data but most are ok and another burner definetly should be). This enables to add data at a later date, you can't edit the data already burnt unless you copy to HDD first and burn the data back on.

b. Close the Session and Finalise the CD - CD is completely closed and cannot have anymore data added unless it was a re-writable.

c. I think but am not sure that the only time you format a CD is when it is when you are going to use Direct CD (where you can simply drag and drop in explorer once formatted.


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[iisbob]

When cd burners first came out they were only CD-R capablable, now there are CDRW drives.

You can open and close a CDR-but you lose the " overhead " of a file table, this is why it's recommended to burn a CDR all at once-CDRW use a different type of file system that allows you to write/rewrite to them, normally called packet writing.

The original CDR's were referred to as WORM { write once/read many }.

I've an old Mitsumi CDR 2X SCSI drive that still works great-it will not recognize CDRW media, even when it's been formatted. I suspect it's because of the different type of file system usage, but it may also be becasue CDRW is a differnt kind of physical media.

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iisbob

There is no such thing as a stupid question; just an improper one.-my own belief

[This message has been edited by iisbob (edited 06-08-2002).]

[integral]

Maybe someone can help me with this. I ahve created a file CD-RW of scans of my old slides. I wanted to burn a copy of this to CDR so I could share them with my family. It was no go, no matter what I tried the burn session errored out. Is this due to the different formats of the CD-RW and CD-R? Can I make CDR copies of a partially written CDRW?

[Fruss Tray Ted]

Two suggestions:

Is the CD-RW disk closed to be read in a standard CD player? If so and you are getting buffer under-runs, slow down your burn speed for your current configuration. If the CD-RW disk is NOT closed, you'll need to upload the info to your hard-drive using your CD burner then burn a CD-R disk with the uploaded material with the same burner. Then do what you choose with what's on your HDD.

[kayofcircles]

Truthfully, I am now a bit confused. There have been occasions when a CDRom wouldn't read a CDRW, but installing a UDF reader has worked. But maybe SCSI is very different? And think it often depends on the software too, because I recently was installing some stuff that my husband had put on a CDR and just for "fun" thought I would see if I could save anything to the CDR with the Sony software. His used Veritas, but my Sony writer saved to the CDR without a hitch. Back when using Direct CD, it did offer a closing dialog...but neither the Veritas nor the Sony software does. And the packet writer softwares don't offer a "closing" option either.

J McRae : If you have a CD writer in both machines, you could certainly give it a try. Maybe I am misunderstanding, but you don't have a writer in one of them? If you do, I would recommend the CDRW disks though..because using the packet writer software is similar to using a floppy and can be updated.

integral : I think Fruss is right..copy the files back onto your hard drive and then save to CDRs. It could be as you said..the UDF format not converting well to whichever format your other software uses. Also, make sure those slides are in a format/file type that your family can read with their puters. Tiff files are usually best for multiple puters, but bmps okay too, or even jpg files...although I hate jpg because so lossy in quality dept for printing.