January 1998
HOW TO PICK THE RIGHT CD RECORDING DEVICE
Burning CDs has caught on like wild fire. Media is cheaper than ever. Drive prices are dropping. Software is better and easier to use. Compatibility issues are being resolved. But which drive is right for you?
There's been a lot of activity in the CD-Recordable (CD-R) /CD-Rewritable (CD-RW) drive market recently. Blank recordable CDs cost less than $3. Drives' recording speeds are increasing. Last year you could only record at 2X. Most drives now record at 4X.
One reason for the amazing growth in CD-Rewritable drives is better software. Companies like Adaptec (Milpitas, CA 408-957-7274) and Seagate (Costa Mesa, CA 714-966-1230) are constantly improving their already good
software. This is great news.
There are two main types of drives:
CD-Recordable (CD-R) and CD-Rewritable (CD-RW). CD-R drives let you record CDs while CD-RW drives let you rewrite CD-RW media.
CD-Recordable
In the past you had to record all 650 MB at once. Users stored their files on their hard drives until they were ready to make a CD. This meant storing 650 MB of data on their hard drive.
Apart from taking up valuable disk space, CD-R offers a few challenges. If the CD crashes when you're making it, you've got the proverbial coaster. Often the CD records successfully but it's flawed when you use it. You may not have set up the files the way you wanted or you could have forgotten to add something. Recording everything at once means starting over if you make a mistake.
After you get it right you need a master CD to make duplicates. This is when CD-R drives are great. You usually have to burn the "master" CD in one sitting.
To make CD recording easier, software manufacturers have developed friendlier interfaces and drag-and-drop solutions. You can easily remove and add files to a CD before it's burned using newer versions of CD-R software from companies like Adaptec and Smart Storage (Andover, MA 508-623-3300).
Up until recently multi-session recording was the main way to add data to a CD without burning all 650 megs at once. This worked ok because you could read the partially burned CD in virtually any CD-ROM drive. The downside was the large overhead. Every time you added data to the CD you lost 15 MB.
Multi-session was best suited to burning high-resolution photographs on a CD. These files are large. They generally take up 20-30 megs each. Data did not work that well. These files are small. Few are larger than 2 MB.
Variable packet writing is an alternative to multi-session recording. With variable packet recording you write various packet sizes (1-100 MB) to the CD. Stop. Take the CD out and read it in another CD-ROM drive. Then record more data. Sounds a little like multi-session? It's similar but not the same. Variable packet writing records data in smaller packets. You only lose 14 KB per packet every time you stop recording.
It also supports two file systems: ISO 9660 and UDF. ISO 9660 lets you read the CD in any CD-ROM drive. DVD drives use UDF.
Variable packet writing turns your CD into a 650 MB floppy disc. Just as you record various amounts of data to the CD at any time you can also "theoretically" erase them from the directory.
Say you record a file named "imaging" to a CD. You revise it and create another version of the file "imaging." Then you want the latest version of "imaging" to replace the file you just burned to the CD. Variable packet writing lets you do this. Just drag the latest version of "imaging" to the recordable CD. The software asks if you want to replace the "imaging" file with the newer version. Say yes. When you click "imaging" on the recordable CD, you'll see the latest version.
The original version of "imaging" is still on the CD. But the pointer in the recorded CD's file directory only goes to the newer version. So the original version of the file is not erased from the CD. That space is still occupied on the CD, only a casual CD user wouldn't know it.
To use variable packet writing you need two things: Software that does it and a CD-R drive that supports it. If the drive doesn't support this form of writing you may not be able to read the disc in any CD-ROM drive.
Smart Storage's (Andover, MA 508-623-3300) FloppyCD uses variable packet writing. It also has a feature called snap shooting that lets you read the data in another drive and still add to the CD before you finalize the CD.
CD-Rewritable
CD-RW drives let you rewrite CD-RW media. For a CD-RW drive to work to full potential it needs to work with the right software and media. A CD-RW drive can't rewrite a piece of CD-R media. It can only record, erase and re-record a piece of CD-RW media.
The first CD-RW drives didn't offer good rewritability. If you wanted to rewrite a piece of rewritable CD media you had to rewrite the entire disc. You couldn't rewrite parts of it.
Newer CD-RW drives and CD-RW software releases let CD-RW media act like a 650 MB floppy disc. These features are often listed as random erase. You can erase individual tracks on your CD-RW media. It doesn't matter where the track is on the CD. Newer CD-RW drives support UDF and ISO 9660 file systems.
These CD-RW drives are also called multifunction drives. Yamaha's (San Jose, CA 408-467-2300) CRW4001t ($550) has three numbers describing the drive. It has 4X recording, 2X rewriting and 6X reading. The drive's specs are shown as 4X/2X/6X. It can make master CDs as well as store data onto rewritable discs.
Microboards' (Chanhassen, MN 612-470-1848) Playwrite 4000RW ($750) 4X/2X/6X drive comes with Adaptec's DirectCD version 2.0 software.
CD-RW multifunction drives are ideal for editing CDs before making masters for duplication. They're an effective way to perform incremental backups. CD-RW media costs $20 each. Blank CD-R media costs less than $3. But you can reuse CD-RW media.
A CD-RW disc can only be read in a CD-RW or multiread drive. CD-R discs can be read in virtually any CD-ROM, CD-R or CD-RW drive.
Ricoh's (San Jose, CA 408-432-8800) newest CD-RW drive bundle, MediaMaster ($500), comes with an ATAPI interface. This makes the product easy to install. You don't have to fiddle with a SCSI card or change the COM port. It comes bundled with Design Intelligence desktop publishing software.
Ricoh's first CD-RW drives don't support random erase out of the box, but they have a solution. You can download a self-extracting file for a firmware upgrade for free from their Web site -- www.ricoh.com. Then install version 2.0 of Adaptec's DirectCD or Seagate's Backup Exec for Rewritable software. That will give the Ricoh MediaMaster drive the random erase functionality.
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