Formatting CDS - is it necessary?

I am new to CD burning and WinXP, but so far my CD burning has gone very smoothly. I looked in Windows Help's Index for "burning CDs ". Got all the instructions I needed.
P.S. Next is to try DVD burning. I do not see anything in Windows Help on that, although I do have some Sonic program installed as OEM. Unfortunately it talks mainly about video recording.

 

mazaprin

Question was answered early on.

We like to do more than just answer the question at hand. We all learn from discussions like this, and the added depth may help someone who searches the forum for related answers. It's expected that one search first before posting to save bandwidth.

 

This guy is a hoot

I will be the first in line laughing when that fat hard drive goes awol. So many times I have heard the phrase "why didn't I back up to cd?" BTW, Nero Ultra 6 will format a dvd-rw or a cd-rw in a few minutes now.

 

Hi charlesvar,

I still think you should switch. Drag to disk still works with CD-Rs, which Nero (at least the OEM) doesn't (won't) use. I've used CD-Rs for backup (just like floppies) for years till I had to switch to Nero and CD-RWs to keep abreast of my students, who get Nero with their new burners.

Using RWs like floppies for backup is a waste. They're more expensive and have to be copied to CD-Rs for permanency anyway, and that means the CD-R is partly wasted because the RWs don't hold anywhere near what the Rs hold (540 vs. 650). I know that optical storage is cheap; it's a matter of principle.

As for the folks that buy external HDDs for backup: lots of luck! Magnetic storage is impermanent; that's why corporations have used multiple daily tapes for years for the inevitable loss of data on the HDDs. An external drive is no safer than an internal drive. Magnetic storage has a life expectancy of 15+ years while optical storage is expected to last 100+ years.

 

burning issues

Amen Sparrow & charlesvar & bic253 knowledge is what most of us gain from this forum

 

Welshjim,
Everything said re: CDs applies to DVDs, in my experience so far with my new DVD-RW drive.

 

Hi Sparrow

Thanks for the Newegg link.

I've been holding off on software upgrades/updates until after SP2. Now that I've have it, I can start thinking about doing just that.

Regards - Charles

 

charlesvar--Did you see that the newegg site says
"*Must be Purchased with Optical Drive!*" ?

 

Hope you'll get it with your new DVD-RW.

Works fine with my old CD-RW as well!

 

Device not ready

Michelle,

Most often, when you get the message "Device not ready" while trying to put a file or folder onto a recordable CD (a CD-R) or copy a CD, that's, well, because the device (CD/DVD recorder - rewriter - burner, all the same) is not ready, i.e. because you or someone else who uses your PC, and that may be a piece of software too, turned it off, intentionaly or unintentionally. Therefore, when you see the message, always please first check the burner's Properties. Right-click on it, e.g. in Windows Explorer, and pick Properties in the offered menu. Then go to the Recording tab and see whether recording is enabled.

All said so far refers to recording, i.e. writing on recordable CDs (CD-Rs) or non-formatted rewritable CDs (CD-RWs). If you want, however, to use rewritable CDs (CD-RWs) in the full sense, as you would do with a floppy or Zip diskette, i.e. by creating files or folders on them, by pasting copied or cut files onto them, by renaming, editing and deleting files on them, then you must first format those CD-RWs, as several BBS members wrote before. And you must have a rewriting software (e.g. Ahead Nero's InCD or Roxio's DirectCD) up and running on your machine.

Unfortunately, this rewriting software or its reconfiguration sometimes turns off CD-R recording and hence my suggestion.

Regards, Srecko

 

Only in Nero. I'm now using Roxio and in "drag to disk" no format is done ahead of writing; the format is done while writing occurs. That's much more efficient. Each time something is written, a little more formatting (appropriate to the size of the data being written) is done.

 

Thank you very much, sparrow! That's highly relevant information; I missed it because Roxio software couldn't recognize my new Samsung CDRW/DVD SM-352M combo, although I had installed latest Roxio driver update (version 5.3.5.10t). So I uninstalled DirectCD, installed InCD and stopped following Roxio developments...

 

Direct CD readable by CD-ROMs

One niggling comment.

It's not true that CDs formatted for Direct CD can be read only on CD-R/W drives and cannot be read by CD ROMs. Both Direct CD and InCD use Adaptec's Universal Data Format (UDF). When you format a CD using Direct CD, it writes a copy of UDF reader to the CD. Each time you place this CD in a CD ROM, it checks for the presence of UDF reader on the host computer and installs it, if necessary. Thereafter, you can read and copy files from any Direct CD in that CD ROM to your hard drive (or floppy) using Copy and Paste. Installation programs work directly from the CD without copying.

One hitch: because the CD ROM is a read-only device, files copied to your hard drive may be set to the read-only ( "R ") attribute. If you need to modify these files on your hard drive, you may have to reset this attribute.

It has been a long time since I've used Nero's InCD, so I'm not sure that the above will work with Nero, but it definitely works with Roxio's Direct CD.

 

Hi simonh,

Welcome to the board.

I think the variation in observations on this subject results from the numerous and varied versions of software used by the participants. The best advice is given in the article I referenced in my first post:

 

Variability

Sparrow-

You're probably quite right about the variability of experience with hardware and software. The article you cited says that you can read Direct CD disks on a CD ROM but that some older CD ROMs cannot do this.

- Simon