Preface
If you already have the CD-ReWriteable drive feel free to skip this part and
go to "Speed or About Media" to start. This first part mostly for those who
may be considering installing a drive.
With the lower prices of CD-Rewriteable drives and media, more and more are
turning to the CD-Rewriteable drive and media for several tasks that used to be
done by diskette or other media. In this page I will attempt to pass on the
basics of the most commonly used CD ReWriteable Drive tasks.
First off, if you do not have a CD ReWriteable drive in your system, the
prices of the most common speeds, are little more than some diskette drives used
to be and lower than many hard drive sizes. At the time of my writing this
page it is not hard to find 8x4x32 drives for under one hundred dollars ( US
funds) and if you really are a good shopper, with rebates, I have seen them
under seventy dollars again US funds. Even 16x12x32 drives can be found for
about one hundred thirty dollars. Add to these facts, if you look at the
amount of data storage possible compared to the standard 3.5" diskette or Zip
disks, the CD-ReWriteable drive is hard to get along without. It would only
take storage of a few large programs to pay for the differences in the cost of
buying a CD-ReWriteable drive from the savings in buying media to store what
you can on one CD! If you were to store a one hundred megabyte program on a
diskettes, it would take about 80 diskettes, at a cost of about thirty dollars
per hundred diskettes. One CD could store that 100 megabyte program five times
over, and still have room left over. If you were going to try to do the same
storage on diskettes the cost of the diskettes alone would exceed the cost of
the drive and the CD-RW media to store it on for most people! Two things to
keep in mind however when searching for a possible CD ReWriteable drive. One,
the interface used by your existing CD Rom drive, and two, the speed of the
system you have currently. To answer the second point, from what I have seen,
anything more than a 8x4x32 drive should not be considered unless you have a
550 mhz system or faster. The reason why I say this is that in many cases, you
will just not be able to use the speed in burning operations. The idea of
faster writing operations to the CD media sounds great but if your processor
does not keep up with the CD writing operations, it will generally mean the CD
data will not be useful or in the case of a CD-R media the CD will be useless
except for something like a coaster as it will not be readable to the drive.
Even CD-RW media can suffer problems from this, and the results can be data you
thought was stored is not useful to you. So from what I have seen, do not
waste your money on a really fast CD - ReWriteable drive unless you have enough
computer to make use of it. From what I have seen a CD ReWriteable drive of
the entry level speed (8x4x32x) will do nicely for systems that have a 550 mhz
processor speed. If you have a processor up to about 900 mhz, you would likely
see the advantage of a 12x8x32 drive. Over 900 mhz, then you would likely be
able to use the 16x12x32 or 40x drives being seen now.
Speed
Many do not know what the 8x4x32x means compared to 12x8x32x. To help
understand is the rating given to the CD ReWriteable drive here are some
examples, an 8x4x32x drive means the speed at which the drive will do a given
function at. The first number ( 8x in the example ) is the speed a drive
will write data to a CD-R media. The second number ( 4x in this case ) is the
speed at which the drive will write data to a CD-RW media. The last number
stated ( 32x ) is the read speed of the drive. There has been much made of
drive speeds in both CD and DVD types recently. The fact is most drives never
make use of even 12x so faster speeds are of little use in many cases. Aside
from buffering up data on your system the speed of the drive is not as critical
as some would attach to it. The actual changes in performance is generally
going to be far less than shown by these numbers unless you have a computer and
software that can take advantage of it. Generally it is better to see
one that claims to be
"burn proof" than a super high speed. Most failures I have seen on CD Writing
operations
are not the fault of the CD-ReWriteable drive being slow but the processor not
keeping up
if you are doing other tasks while burning a CD-R/RW media. It is often best
to only
be burning the CD and not doing other functions at the same time.
About Media
The next thing to understand is some of the basics about CD media. The terms
CD-R and CD-RW concern the actual media ( blank CDs ) used in the
CD-ReWriteable drive. CD-R media you can write data to that media ONLY ONCE.
This type ( CD-R ) media is suited for things like Music CDs and data that you
wish to save and not update such as back up of downloaded program files and so
on. Unless you have an unusual CD player on a home stereo, the CD-R media used
for computers is the same media possible to make music CDs with also. The
other type of CD is the CD-RW media. This type of CD media is re-writeable
perhaps up to 1000 times. These CDs may or may not be acceptable for playback
in entertainment type systems and some systems that use a recorder may require
a special re-writeable CD for their operation. In the cases of both types of
computer CD media, the actual data storage is often less than the size stated
on the package. Why this is has to do with different file formats used for
stated storage on the CD. The ISO format is usually used and in most cases
tells you the CD media will hold 650 mega bytes. In the real world however you
will most likely find that the CD media storage is really 511 mega bytes of
files sizes as you would see on the hard drive with Windows Explorer. So any
time you are adding data to a CD during a burning operation be aware that you
need to be know of how much you are attempting to put on the CD. Most software
will check to see if it will fit or not on CD-R media burns before it ruins a
CD but you should check and be sure it will fit before you process. In the
case of CD-RW media however this may not be the case and you can easily find
yourself trying to put more on the CD-RW than it is possible to contain. The
last
thing I have found is little difference between more costly CD-R media and
inexpensive media.
Failures are far more likely from poor handling of the media ( scratches ),
power outages while burning, or the computer not being able to keep up with the
data demands
of the drive ( over burnt ). On CD-R media once you start burning, complete or
not, the CD is used and
if you have an error, the CD is useless. If you place 1 bit of data on it or
the entire amount possible
on that CD it is used and can no longer be written to. If you are in an area
subject to many brown outs
you will find a UPS ( Uninterruptable power supply ) a very useful addition to
your CD write operations.
In most cases the CD-R media is the type of media used for making music CDs
that can be played on home entertainment systems and so on. Remember once
burnt, a CD-R media is used up for adding files. You cannot go back and add
more to a CD-R media so if you write one byte of data or the full storage of
the CD, the writing process is a one time only thing, so it is done once the
CD is ejected from the drive or the writing process is interrupted. ( yes this
means if you have a power outage, or your processor fails to keep up with the
CD so that the burn gets stopped, the CD is likely useless. ) The good news
about the CD-R media is that it is VERY inexpensive at this point. The fact
is, it is possible to get rebates in some cases where the media is actually
without cost once you get the rebate back. I would however say the cost of
the average CD-R is going to be about forty cents in US funds, or about
1/145th of the price of diskettes on a storage basis.
CD-RW media is the media that can be re-written to. Generally these CDs can
accept up to 1000 re-write operations before they are no longer useful.
These CDs are generally a good choice for backup of data, or storage of
software you may update in time, or even personal data or things you wish to
retain a copy of in the event of a hard disk failure. In most cases CD-RW
media is not a good choice for music recording. Some CD players on
entertainment type systems can read the CD-RW media however some cannot. All
you can do is try it with a CD-RW media and see if it works in your case.
There is a third type of media but it is not generally considered for computer
CDs, that being a special CD-RW media that works for some CD- Recorders on home
stereo systems. In these cases you may have to use their own CD media to have
the record function work.
What is the difference between CD-R and CD-RW anyway? It has to do with the
way the two states in data storage is done on the media, or how they are placed
on the actual CD media. One is an actual phyical burning done to the media so
once it is burned, it cannot be unburned - CD-R. The burning process, is
really much like having little holes burned into a reflective layer on the CD.
If there is a hole it is read as a given mark or space state ( a "mark" is read
as a 1 state, and if there is not a hole, a space, it is read as a 0 )
Needless to say this is done literly millions of times on a CD media. The
process is slightly different on a CD-RW media but the net result is the same.
The heat generated by the laser beam inside layers of the CD media heats the
media to a change the reflective quality of the media so it is "read" as a mark
or space. This is how the CD works but on a scale of millions and millions of
times to store the required data. CD-RW media costs about five to seven times
the cost of a CD-R media, or about two to two dollars fifty cents per CD-RW
media. The fact is the mark and space is how all data is transfered to some
extent. Even the magnetic media ( diskettes and hard drives ) store data in
marks and spaces, and your modem talks in this same way. The reason for this
is that computers operate on base 2 math, not base 10. They only count in 1 or
0 or mark and space.
Basic Software
Most CD ReWriteable drives come with some software to put the drive to use
with. I am not going to go into the merits of one program versus another, but
there are some factors to be aware of. Adaptec a leader in CD Rom drivers and
controllers, writes the most popular CD ReWriteable drive controller software.
(
Adaptec EZ-CD Creator (http://www.roxio.com)
) Other makers such as
Sony CD Extreme (http://www.sony.com)
or
Nero Burning CD Mastering Software (http://www.ahead.de/)
is much the
same in operation and features. Keep in mind however the versions of this
software in many cases is not the full version of the program if you purchase
it. Typical prices for the CD mastering software seem to be in the one hundred
dollar and up range. The software that comes with most CD ReWriteable drives
however
is good enough for most home users. After you have installed the CD
ReWriteable drive, and the computer has found the hardware, you will in most
cases just need to install the CD ReWriteable software. Most of the time the
default settings are such that the software more or less installs it's self.
In most cases all of the CDs written with a given program can be written on
another drive using another program. There is however one exception. ( if you
are using
Windows 2000 see note at the bottom of this page! ) There is
a RANDOM WRITE possible on some programs such as the Adaptec software that may
not be supported by other software without downloading a special driver. UDF
Reader This driver is supposed to available at the Adaptec website but I went
there and found that the support for such has been moved to the
www.roxio.com site.
Heres their page for UDF Reader for Windows (http://www.roxio.com/en/support/udfwin/udfwinupdates.html)
which I have placed that link here for those interested, or I have a
zipped version (udf.zip)
of this here for those interested or the other link does not work. The UDF
reader is only for random write operations that are not supported without it's
use. If you are not sharing CD-RW media with a user of the Adaptec EZ- CD
Creator software, chances are you will not need this download. If you have
problems installing the download there is a small page on the www.roxio.com
site ( see link above ) about the install of the Random Read driver.
Ok you have the software installed now what? Most of these programs have two
seperate sections. The first section deals mainly with CD-RW drives so that it
can be written to more or less as a removable disk. ( Sony abCD software for
example ) When you put a CD-RW media in the drive, you can usually click on the
program icon ( generally on the system tray ) and then format the CD-RW media.
Keep in mind you will need to know what media you have. Most are clearly
marked and most drives will know which media type it is and refuse to use the
wrong media, however it is a good idea to know the media types before you
attempt to use them incorrectly. If your drive does not recognize the
differences in the media it could ruin the media by treating it as the wrong
type. Also make sure you place the CD in the drawer carefully and correctly.
Putting the media in the wrong way may result in a drive jamup or failure. CD
media all goes in label side up and reflective side down. ( un-marked spindle
packs are generally set up with label side up even if there is no label.)
Formatting CD-RW media is of course the first step. Start the CD-RW write
software and format CD-RW media as you are instructed by the software used.
Once you start the format process, it will usually open to options of fast
format ( for a CD that has been formated before ) or full for one that has not
been. Keep in mind that a media that is a CD-RW that was formatted for a
Random Write may not be readable on a CD ReWriteable drive that does not have
that feature installed. After you format the CD successfully, you may start
using it for data storage. You can do this by the typical Windows Explorer /
My Computer type file management as you would with any other drive you have,
but keep in mind that it will often be slower and that you should be aware of
the processing demands so that you do not over run the processor or you may see
data write errors. Most of the time you will just need to wait a second or two
for the CD LED to go out and the write operation to be completed. Some
programs have a notice appear on the screen telling you it is clearing Cache.
The second part of most software is the CD-R burning section. This is usually
found on a desktop icon and is a program that opens about like most software
does as compared to the CD-RW software which usually runs in the background.
The CD-R media and software is what generally is used for music recording.
The recording software usually offers copy a CD, which means simply to copy CD
to CD generally with a cache on the hard drive, to aid in this process. You
should have at least 1gb free space on your hard drive to copy CD to CD for
this reason. If you do not have that much free space on a drive on your system
as some will offer the option of using other drives than drive C if you have
partisions on your hard drive or more than one physical drive used by Windows.
If you do not have 1gb free you should attempt to clear off files until you can
maintain that much free space anyway if you are using Windows 98, ME or 2000.
You should attempt to keep at least 25% free on your hard drive if not more as
it is used for Windows Virtual memory operations anyway. If you are unable to
copy a CD with this Copy CD function it is usually a result of not having the
room on the hard drive. If you are trying to copy a music CD and have no
success doing so, you may need to use ripping software to copy the CD contents
to a WAV file on your hard drive before again putting it on a CD with the make
an Audio CD function found on most software. If your program lacks this
function you may need to go to a site like www.tucows.com and seek out software
for making MP3 or WAV files into CD Tracks. There are several shareware
programs for that purpose. See the next section for more about this. If you
wish to only record MP3 format files to the CD you should use the make a DATA
CD function. The Audio CD function will attempt to write in a CDA format
readable by home stereo systems in most cases.
Converting & Recording
Converting Audio files from one format to another. You can change CDA format
to WAV format with Ripping software. There are many such programs such as
Music Match (limited-shareware http://www.musicmatch.com )
,
AudioGrabber (limited-shareware http://www.audiograbber.com-us.net/ )
, or my favorite shareware software for the
purpose
Graceamp at http://www.graceamp.musicdot.com/
or the zipped file from here at
GraceAmp zip file download from this URL
(freeware). Be sure what you're downloading in this area. Some
programs are demos, ( limited time operation ) , shareware ( you are saying
that you will buy it or stop using it after a given number of days of trial.
Some programs also have nag screens to remind you of this or some functions
disabled ) or freeware. I have not seen any freeware CD mastering software yet
myself
or burners aside from the ones that come with CD drives. There is also adware
which puts an ad on your system as well. ( something I really dislike ) The
next fuction is to convert the WAV format to MP3 or CDA format in most cases.
Windows Media Player 7.x versions claim to have support for burning CD media
also.
However given Windows Media Player "Swiss Army Knife" type operation
I find it hard to believe it does it well. It may function but your results
may not
be up to what you would like for Home Stereo playback. You may find
Windows Sound Recorder
useful for making changes to audio formats in some cases when dealing with WAV
format files as some CD Ripping and burning is a two step process depedning on
the software used.
Most of the CD burning software will burn to CDA format. As I have already
said, you can download some shareware versions which work ok but may have
limited functions such as only burning 10 tracks without buying the software.
Out of the shareware versions of this burning software for making CD tracks (
CDA )
from MP3 files, I like
MP3 to CD converter by Thomas Yuan
as it at least gives you 10 tracks on the shareware version. ( $20.00 for
full version ) Some only allow
4. If you do not have CD masterig software provided with your drive/computer
to write directly from WAV to CDA format already, (
most of the programs will do that one ) you can of course convert the WAV
format to MP3 easy enough and cheaply too. If you look on my
Helps and Links page
there are 3 different WAV to MP3 converters ( Lame, Blade, and Graceamp.
Personally I recommend Lame in the MP3 gear download package but Blade is also
included in that download as well as the Windows Interface for the programs
GraceAmp also rips tracks from CDA format. The LameBatch and BladeBatch are to
interface the Lame and Blade WAV to MP3 encoders to Windows Operation, and not
required if you are just using them with other software as a plug in. ).
If you prefer to download your own versions of Lame encoder, or check for a
newer version,
use this link, for the authors website (http://mitiok.cjb.net/).
These Encoders often work with other programs as well.
You can find others on software sites such as
www.tucows.com
which should have several things listed in the CD or Audio sections after you
select the Operating system and mirror you wish to visit. One thing I do
STRONGLY suggest to anyone who encodes music files. Please preview ( listen to
) the file before you release it on a service like, Music City, Napster or
KaZaa. If it
has errors re-encode or at least do not share it until you have a good version
recorded. Some times you may also find files tagged with WinAmp may not play
if you do not have WinAmp installed on your computer. I am not sure why this
is, but
the fix is to get ReMixer listed elsewhere on this page, and convert it to WAV
format,
and back the MP3 using one of the encoders listed, or, get WinAmp. I
personally suggest
if you get WinAmp, to use the smallest possible installation. ( read the
install screens carefully )
WinAmp tends to try to take over many playback functions if you allow it.
About Quality tags on music. The Quality numbers often seen on MP3 files has
to do with the bits per second it is recorded at. Think of it more or less
like the old Reel to Reel recording machines. The faster the tape speed was
the better the quality the recording was. The same can be seen on VCR tapes.
Standard Play is better than Long Play or XLP Extra Long Play. The reason for
this is the standard play tape passes over the recording and playback heads of
the tape player giving a better recording and play back. The same holds true
with digital modes. The more bits that can be devoted to the recording, the
wider the audio range on the recording. The 128 quality recording is good
enought for basis to convert and burn in on CDs for home stereo recordings.
These are made from 44,100 hz 16 bit stereo WAV recordings. By the same token,
Qualitys of 48 or 60 are roughly like recording from the FM radio. Generally
you would not wish to use anything lower than about 112 for CD recordings.
Quality lower than 96 for encoding to CDA for Home stereo playback later may be
noticable, depending on the recording the process started from.
Quality from 48 to 96 work fine for most computer playback or perhaps CDs used
for car audio, unless you are using
your computer for the basis of your home music system or have a state of the
art system in your car. Even with
"Quality" numbers over 112, it does not insure your recorded file is perfect.
It is just
an indication of how many bits were used in the encoding of the file when it
was converted from WAV to MP3. For true CD MASTER quality, you would need to
start with a 256 bitrate/Quality file. ( few MP3 encoders will do more than
128kb/sec )
Many factory CDs you get in stores are
over a 128 bit rate but few can tell as the quality of a well made recording at
such a rate is beyond most people's ability to hear any more range, and the
ability of the speakers to reproduce the sounds any better. That being said,
it is still best to play it back any recordings or encodings you make before
putting it on a CD or share a given file
with others online. I have run into may files with errors in the encoding
process, which is generally the result of the computer not keeping up with the
encoding at one point during the process before it was sent out on a service
like
www.musiccity.com
or
www.KaZaa.com
. Of these two Music City Morpheus is supposed to be free of spyware but at
last Check KaZaA had to still have it removed by a program like Adaware (
http://www.lavasoftusa.com
) They are really the same program and seem to be the replacement for Napster.
It is possible to remix the tracks at times using programs
that can convert the files back into WAV format such as
ReMixer
(freeware download zipped from this website or
is supposed to be the download site from ZDNet when it works.
). One of the things that really can get someone
upset is to
spend perhaps an hour or more downloading a recording only to find that it is
flawed and was never checked for an error. So if you are going to make your
own files at least play them once and not share any that have recording errors.
I would also strongly suggest antivirus scans be done before openning any
files downloaded from ANY source on the Internet with currently updated
antivirus software. Those that distribute virus files often do so without
knowing any better. If everyone takes the time to set up and maintain anti
virus protection, there would no longer be a problem. Until that time just try
to be considerate and also save yourself a lot of headaches and keep antivirus
software in operation. See the
Eyes on Spies page
for more about the need for antivirus protection, and the
Helps and Links page
for more information about downloads of software.
For CD-R / CD-RW / DVD drive help and conversion information, including install
information for hardware and Operating System drivers here is a very good
source.
http://www.fadden.com/
which I located and should be helpful to those with hardware or software
issues not covered above.
Don't feel like going to that site, or the link to Adaptec's downloadable tools
and fixes not working?
I have included the files they are going to send you for a Windows test for the
support for a CD-RW drive in this
HTML Page
and the
zip file
that contains the files you will need.
This zip has 3 files in it with the basic instuctions about how to use them
for possibly fixing your CD-RW problems with Windows 2000 / NT. As always the
contents of this zip are the files I use and have been virus scanned.
Important Note!!!
If you have just moved from Windows 95/98 to Windows 2000 you will find some
changes to how you use a CD-RW drive. Many of the programs formerly used for
CD-RW on Windows 95/98 do not work with Windows 2000. I am not exactly sure
where
Windows ME and NT fall in this problem. However given the price of CD-R media
and if you
are planning a back up of files using your CD Rewriteable drive, I strongly
suggest you use CD-R media
for this purpose as some CD-RW media will not work correctly until you add in
the drivers to read CD formats
used on some CD-Rewriteable drives. The CD-R format is supported and is not a
problem. Most of this
centers on a Random Packet Write I believe, and if your software supports it or
not. Most of the
drivers I needed to use when I set up Windows 2000 Pro, I placed in the zip
file on this page
( my CD RW Stuff Page )
The above page link details the information about setting up the CD-ReWriteable
drive to get the CD-RW
function back. From what reading I have done is sounds like the Windows 2000
software requires the
use of the Random Write and will show CD-RW media that uses the abCD type
software as full and as a
CD-R media for most purposes. With this all being a problem I do not suggest a
back up of files with a
CD-RW media if you plan on doing upgrades to Windows 2000 from another Windows
version. You may
encounter problems recovering your backed up information from the media until
you get all the required
drivers installed. In otherwords, with some drives and some software versions
it may show media as
full but no files listed, or even damaged. If you do not have any luck with
the information here, contact the
support for the CD-ReWriteable drive you have. In most cases, they have
already seen these problems and
should be able to direct you to a solution for your drive without any great
problem. As far as I know however
the above files are not a problem for anyone to use and install. It is just
going to add additional format support
for your CD-ReWriteable drive, and should add to the usefulness of it. One
last point if you have encountered
problems reading a CD-RW media made on another CD-ReWriteable drive, the files
offered here may provide a
solution to that problem as well. For addtional help also see
www.fadden.com
which has a large amount of CD drive information.
MS Technet page about Windows Media Player security patches.
My Sound Recorder Help Page
Use this link to get TXT format version of this page.
( for easy printing )
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