A "burning" question

[acornwebworks]

I burn CD-Rs and CD-RWs all the time with no problem.

I have a couple of guys who insist that I have to format the CDs before I do this because *they* have to format their CDs before doing this.

I tell them I don't. They tell me I'm wrong. Hmmmm.

I figure that they are doing something different from me, and would like to know what that is. But asking them isn't an option - I've tried, and they are so convinced they are right and I am wrong that they refuse to do anything but argue.

Now I could just drop it with no problem. If they want to be silly, that's fine. But they bring it up on a regular basis. (I think they're more interested in my being wrong about something than in finding out how to burn a CD-R or CD-RW without having to spend an hour formating the darn things!)

That's getting really old. Particularly since I am more than willing to be wrong about things, and am on a regular basis :-)

We have used the same software (Nero, Adapetec, and Roxio) as well as the same CDs out of the same package!!!!

Since I never have to format the CDs, I have no clue as to what they are doing different.

Do any of you?

(Amusing comments about the stubbornness of some people are always welcome :-)

Thanks,
Kendall

[ADAM Web Design]

I'm going to go with "being extremely stupid" as my answer for $100, Alex.

CD-Rs and CD-RWs are generally preformatted. This is indicated by the length in minutes and size in megabytes of data storage. The disks do not need to be formatted at all or anything of that nature, except in the case of CD-RWs if you want to use them from Windows Explorer. You can format a CD-RW for this purpose just so that you can drag and drop files from the Explorer interface. However, approx. 25% of the disk space is used just to convert the disks for this purpose, so it's a total waste considering the disk can just as easily be formatted (again) from Nero/Roxio/whatever.

So my guess (strictly speculative) is that they're formatting disks for use with Windows Explorer.

[matauri]

Ditto to what AdamWebDesign said.

I often use CD's as a backup for my hard drive & require the drag & drop of Explorer, so then I format. But for other, I cant see the point in wasting the space either.

I would say they took a little information & took it the wrong way :-)

[bud]

Lets look at the case at hand...

CD-R's can only be written to once...

So if you format a CD-R...
What pretell are you doing???

Yup,,, You guessed it...
You're writting to that disk...
For the First and only time...

If you Format a CD-R you just created a perfectly blank disk...
And it's done....

Now on the other side, a CD-RW can be Formated and Re-Formated several times.

If you use a CD-RW as you would a CD-R...
that is, by using Roxio or Nero to burn a specified list of files to the disk as a project...
You successfully used a CD-RW as a CD-R...
Windows for this matter will now "not" recognise the disk as a CD-RW but instead treat it as a CD-R...
With this in mind, if you are going to use Roxio or Nero to burn a project to the disk, you should be using CD-R media. Save yourself the 50 cents...

By formatting a CD-RW you make it possible to use the disk in the same fashion as you would a floppy disk.
You can use Windows Back-up to back up files to a formatted CD-RW, as you can save files from almost any application directly to the formatted CD-RW...
Which, as you can see saves you the time of having to create a project of the thing...

Oh Media does not come preformated...
If it did, you would need to know which standard your drive supported...

[Keimos]

Have any of you tried HP Record Now. It creates a P DLA CD that is redable by most of the other formats and the great thing even if youare not sure whether a CD has been formatted or not it will let you know.

Saves a lot of the questions that have been asked previously.

My thoughts to totally agree with the above. The majority of CD-R/RW are already preformatted and whichever program you use will generally check to see that it is OK to copy. It all boils down to who you want to share with and most of these programs support cross platform exchange dependant on the type of CD that you are burning

[leec2004]

I've only ever had to 'format' a CD-R or CD-RW when using Roxio DirectCD or Nero InCD.

I've found both packages a Pain to use, mainly because of the system resources they eat up as well as the routine of making the discs compatible with other drives when ejecting them.

The only system like this that seems to work is the one built into Windows XP, and even that's touchy at times....

Any backups I need to do, I normally just use Creator Classic and Drag and Drop folders in there!

All you have to really worry about is having plenty of free disc space.

[Xcalabers]

Bud,

When you format a CD-R you can write to it more than once time. The catch is you can't erase. Sure windows explorer will allow you to delete the file but the space it used is not freed

[colr]

Are you sure they aren't winding you up Acorn?

Have these people ever asked you to help them 'download the Internet' - it's always a cracker hearing people ask that!!!

lol

I say you start hitting back - ask them to ask your boss to order another set of felopian tubes for the server. Then sit back and laugh . . . he he!

lol.

[bud]

Bud,

When you format a CD-R you can write to it more than once time. The catch is you can't erase. Sure windows explorer will allow you to delete the file but the space it used is not freed

If you format a CD-R...
You will ruin the disk...

Never format a CD-R

Only format a CD-RW

It seems as though that some have the distinct impression that CD media comes pre-formated...

Not one company boasts the availability of pre-formated media as an option for any of there products. ALL manufacturers do however tell you how to format the CD-RW media.

Be my guest and follow the manufacturers links from there coresponding products and read on...

You may Look-up the media from this site --> DiMan Systems (http://dimansystems.rite2u.com)

[TrafficProducer]

CD-Rs and CD-RWs

I drag and drop (Windows XP) to CRD and CDWR for backups.

I appear that using Windows XP for CDWR will not allow me to delete just any one individual file on the CDWR. Data may be added but the whole CDWR disk appears to need requiring erasing to deleted files.

In Nero after a CDWR format the disk nay be used for read, write, ease files individually.

CDRs don't format but able to write new files to, until disk is full, (multi-session).

Note that overwriting an old file on a CDR may not delete the old file but update the file pointers to say where the new file is, this means that the old and the new file will exist taking up twice the CDR disk space.

CDR = CD ROM= READ ONLY MEMORY, Once space is written to that space may not be used again.

CDRW CD RW=Read Write may be rewritten to a number of times (not for ever, about 1000 times)

Search on Blue Ray 50 Gb DVD drivesif you want a lot of storage.

[RonBurk]

While the exact technical details quickly get gruesome and boring, it may be worth looking at a hand-waving overview of the CD-R/W burning arena. Some inaccuracies in what follows are in the name of brevity.

There are (roughly) two different ways to burn a CD-R or CD-RW: "one big burn" or "packet writing".

The "one big burn" method is the traditional way to burn a CD-R/W. The downside is that you don't get to add any more data later to the disk, but the upside is that the actual file format used scores well in the backward compatibility arena. For example, if you want that CD-R/W to be readable on any Windows machine (and even a Mac or Linux machine, with any luck), then you want the "one big burn" approach to writing a CD-R/W. If you're creating a music CD that you hope will play correctly in your car CD player, you definitely want the "one big burn" approach.

It's worth noting that Windows XP out of the box offers a user interface for CD-R/W burning that looks a bit like "packet writing" (you can drop another file onto the CD-R/W whenever you want) but is actually a bundled Roxio "one big burn" process. In the default Windows XP case, the files you drag and drop are actually being stored in a temporary directory on your hard disk -- no burning is taking place. You then have to perform a separate operation to tell Windows XP you're done collecting data for that CD-R/W, to tell it to finally do the "one big burn".

Of course, if you're using recordable CDs for things like data backup (as opposed to burning music CDs), you really want to treat the CD "like a floppy". IOW, you want to be able to backup some files to it, take it to another machine and read them, bring it back, backup some more files and delete an existing file, take it to another machine to read, etc.

There is a standard (heh -- at least one!) format for recordable CDs that allows such operations. However, unlike the filesystem format that is used with floppies, this standard is not implemented as a part of Windows. That basically means that each vendor looks at the filesystem specification, implements their idea of what it means, and probably everything works fine so long as you only read the recordable CD using exactly the same machine/software configuration that you used to burn it. Of course, when you use "packet writing" to burn your recordable CD "like a floppy" on your machine and then take it to a different machine to read, you may discover that the software on that other machine disagrees with your software on some niggling detail of the filesystem standard, resulting in difficulties in reading the CD. Ugh.

Some "packet writing" software (especially "drive letter access" types of software) will want you to "format" the recordable CD before starting to use it. However, other types of software will implicitly format the CD for you as needed. That's one possible source of confusion about whether you "need" to format the CD before using it.

As usual, Microsoft promises to solve all problems Real Soon Now. If standards aren't working, well then, you just create more standards! In this case, Microsoft promises that the next version of Windows will support the "Mt. Rainier" standard, and you will, at long last, with nothing more than a copy of Windows and no third-party software be able to treat recordable CDs "like a floppy", and the resulting floppies will work with... well, at least other boxes running that new version of Windows that's (over)due in a few years. Sadly, you may also need to purchase new CD drives that provide some hardware support for the new "Mt. Rainier" standard. (Hardware support includes background formatting, and IDE-like auto-detection and workaround of damaged areas of the disc.)

Of course, by the time Microsoft has that nifty solution for using CDs as a backup media, most everyone will already have shifted to using DVDs (or even higher-capacity media) for data backup :-)

[acornwebworks]

Are you sure they aren't winding you up Acorn?

Have these people ever asked you to help them 'download the Internet' - it's always a cracker hearing people ask that!!!

lol

I say you start hitting back - ask them to ask your boss to order another set of felopian tubes for the server. Then sit back and laugh . . . he he!

lol.

Unfortunately I *am* their boss :-)

One of them hates it whenever I am right...even though I keep trying to explain that, as we seem to be able to do things differently, there must be more than one way to do this, so let's find out what it is. (Perhaps this explains why he has 2 ex-wives who don't like him and I've been happily married to the same guy for decades :-) He's been the prime instigator in all this.

The other is stuck back in the Windows 98 world and stresses about everything. The first considers the second our resident computer tech genius, so if *he* has to format a CD, then obviously I am wrong.

However I asked the second to replace a motherboard in a non-essential PC (i.e. if the hard drive crashed and all the data was irrecoverable, the agency wouldn't suffer) the other day, and he said he didn't dare. My idea of what comprises a 'computer tech genius' and that of Mr. Instigator don't seem to match :-)

Neither handles change well, so they are both stressed that we are upgrading the lab to XP Pro this summer. About time, you say? Why bother... Longhorn will be out soon, you say?

We offer many things, including MOUS certification and job placement services to people with disabilities, so we can't keep teaching people on Windows 98 and Office 2000 in our area.

The guys think we should stick with Win98 because, according to Mr. Tech Genius, there are less virus attacks against it. On the other hand, the area businesses with whom we have the most success have asked that we upgrade so that our students are better prepared and have more opportunities. Since the unemployment rate for people with disabilities is historically about 10-20 times greater than that for people without, I know who I'm going to listen to. Heck, it's what I get paid for :-)

So...thank you very much for everyone's responses. I feel I have a clear understanding now. It's obvious that what I thought originally is correct...no one is 'wrong' - there is simply more than one way to burn CDs. (Oh, shoot, that makes me 'right' - Mr. Instigator is going to be really ticked off now :-)

Plus you have provided me with information upon which to make informed decisions as to what process to use when. I will provide them with this information. It's sad that 'being right' was so much more important than learning.

FYI, they are both of the 'drag and drop' school, which explains why they are constantly having to format the CDs. I am not, so don't.

FYI 2, for those of you who were probably thinking "why don't you just fire these guys', they are both good and patient instructors. That took some doing, though. When I first came onboard to turn around a program that churned out unprepared students who didn't get jobs...I worded it a LOT nicer than that...they argued about how highly skilled they were and how highly skilled the students were and that my changes were going to hurt everyone.

I made them take the basic MOUS certification exams and told them it was "so that we can advertise MOUS certified instructors", not because I knew they were suffering from delusions of grandeur about their skills at that time. I figured they'd believe the exam results, if not me.

They failed every one. Miserably.

Since then, they have improved their skills enormously, and our job placement rate has gone from about 2% to over 85% because the students *are* coming out highly skilled. So I'll put up with some whining now and then :-)


Thanks for all your help!