Need Help Burning CD's

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D2

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I am technologically challenged!!  ??? I have tried to put digital pictures onto CD's for the first time.  I am using CD-RW CDs but once I put the pictures on the CD, I can't change file names or delete files.  I thought with the "Read/Write" CDs I would be able to do that.  I am going into Windows Explorer, copying the files to the CD and then choosing the "Write these files to CD".  :-\

I would appreciate any help from the technologically astute.  ;)

Thanks,

D2
 
Using Windows to write to the CD writes them as if the medium were CD-R.  To use CD-RW requires a special driver for the UDF file system, Windows doesn't support that mode natively.  You need something like Nero Burning ROM or similar CD burning software that includes CD-RW support.
 
Thanks, Ned.  I would have thought with CD technology, I would have had a program on my computer to do that.  I want my floppies back!!!

D2
 
D2,

You may be mis-understanding what re-writeable is capable of. It is not an 'update in place' media like a hard drive; it merely means you can read a file from it, modify it in memory, and write it back to the same cd. It allows multiple writes to the same cd whereas regular cd's and recorders are one-time only writes.
 
Thanks, Karl.  Yes, I guess I did misunderstand.  I thought with the read/write format I could modify files on the CD like on my hard drive or floppies.

D2
 
D2,

You may be mis-understanding what re-writeable is capable of. It is not an 'update in place' media like a hard drive; it merely means you can read a file from it, modify it in memory, and write it back to the same cd. It allows multiple writes to the same cd whereas regular cd's and recorders are one-time only writes.

That's not really the case, Karl.  A CDRW can indeed be updated in place with suitable software, i.e. any software that supports "UDF" format. Nero Burning and Roxio are the two major suppliers of UDF software, which basically formats the CD in a fixed block architecture similar to a hard disk uses and then the CDRW operates in the same way as a hard disk or floppy thereafter.  Windows does not include any UDF format software direct from Microsoft, so the file write-back mode that you describe is the only thing that WinXP supports, but it s not theonly way to do things.
 
Thanks, Gary.  If I had known I would have to purchase separate software, I probably wouldn't have bought the CDs and a case and put the money into a 2 gig flash drive which is more user friendly for the technologically challenged.  ;)
 
Karl said:
D2,

You may be mis-understanding what re-writeable is capable of. It is not an 'update in place' media like a hard drive; it merely means you can read a file from it, modify it in memory, and write it back to the same cd. It allows multiple writes to the same cd whereas regular cd's and recorders are one-time only writes.

Karl, not sure what you mean by, "Update in Place". Could you give me an example?
 
Karl said:
D2,

You may be mis-understanding what re-writeable is capable of. It is not an 'update in place' media like a hard drive; it merely means you can read a file from it, modify it in memory, and write it back to the same cd. It allows multiple writes to the same cd whereas regular cd's and recorders are one-time only writes.

Hey, Karl  -- forget my last post. Here's a definitioin I found:

The disk drive is divided into sectors and when any information is needed in a sector the whole sector is read into memory into a buffer and then the buffer is searched to find the piece of information the program requested.  The information could be changed and replaced in the buffer as long as the change did not overlap other data in the buffer or change the buffer?s size.  The buffer could then be re-written to its place on the disk.  This is called update in place.  To make this possible, we have to arrange  that each field and each record are always a fixed size.  Then when we update the fields we can write the record back into the same space in the buffer.

I hadn't heard that term before -- and it seemed to imply that the update itself was occcurring on the hard drive -- or other storage media.

We were suggesting our clients us CDRW's at one time for storage so they could use several a week and then one for off site -- but they were such a hassle to work with we are now suggesting Flash Drives instead.
 
and put the money into a 2 gig flash drive which is more user friendly for the technologically challenged.

A flash drive beats just about every other portable media, hands down. And a flsh drive the size of a CD is no longer very expensive.

 
Bob and Gary,

The term 'update in place' means reading a specific portion of the media, modifying it, an re-writing back to the same place on the media. Back in the old days, you had to specify a specific cylinder, head, and sector where the original data was to be stored. If you added data at some later time (increased the size of the data; not just modifying existing data), you needed to write it to a different portion of the media, as the previous space was too small. Same with RW media. The sectors, if you will, cannot be increased in size, so an overflow area and appropriate links to it, are created so it appears as a contiguous data file. It's kind of like current hard drive technology - if the drive has defective cylinder, there are 'extra' cylinders which are automatically allocated, but this is transparent to the user; you don't know it's happening. Goes back to the premise that you can't put 1 gallon into a 1 quart jar.

And Bob, the buffer you referred to is not on the media, but in the computer memory. You can make any changes you want in the buffer, but it still must fit into the fixed sector size of the output media. Ned can probably back me up on this, but way back we had some programming languages that supported variable record lengths, but they were so difficult to manage that they died a cruel and almost instantaneous death - VTAM is one example.
 
Karl said:
And Bob, the buffer you referred to is not on the media, but in the computer memory. You can make any changes you want in the buffer, but it still must fit into the fixed sector size of the output media.

Thanks, Karl. I believe that's what the author of the definition I posted was saying or trying to say.
 
Hey, I liked variable length records, I made a lot of money programming routines to read and write 'em :D

CD-R can be used as a RW medium, but when you rewrite a file, it doesn't replace th original, it just writes a new copy to the CD-R and blocks the identity of the original version.  Of course, the reduces the amount of usable space on the CD-R, but it appears as if the file was rewritten.  This all assumes that the drive support multi-session and the medium wasn't closed out after writing previously.

Probably more technical than anyone cares to know :)
 
Ned said:
CD-R can be used as a RW medium, but when you rewrite a file, it doesn't replace th original, it just writes a new copy to the CD-R and blocks the identity of the original version.

Probably more technical than anyone cares to know :)

Ned, I can remember when I discovered that. Never had the need for another RW.  :)

BTW, a Fry's ad last week had a 2g flash drive for $34.95. One of those one per customer things.
 
Flash drives are getting so cheap, everyone should have several of them.  They are the new floppy disk.
 
Hey, I liked variable length records, I made a lot of money programming routines to read and write 'em

I seem to recall that you also tried to get your customers to believe that ALGOL was the programming language of the future ;D

Bought a 100-pak of 700 Mb Memorex CD-r's at Sam's for 19.95; box of 100 floppies was 19.95. Go figure. Still looking for a good price on 2Gb flash, but they don't seem to have them for under $60 around here. If someone wanted to buy one for me at Fry's and send it, I would be ever so grateful!
 
Not Algol, PL/I :D  So what are you going to do with 100 floppies?
 
Well, floppies are collector's items.  You should have bought them and put 'em on Ebay, one at a time :)
 
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