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You can put a bunch of files on a CD-R
today, play them all week, then put more files on the same
CD-R next week.
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technofile
Al Fasoldt's reviews and
commentaries, continuously available online since
1983
T e c h n o f i l e
How to treat CD-Rs as if they were CD-RWs
July 27, 2003
By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2003, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2003, The Post-Standard
Blank CD-R disks are incredibly cheap.
But CD-RWs, the "read-write" erasable blank CDs,
usually cost a lot more. Wouldn't it be great if you
could treat a CD-R like a CD-RW and record on it again and
again?
Do I have good news for you. And, well,
bad news, too. CD-Rs can be used just like CD-RWs in many
ways. You can put a bunch of files -- MP3 music tracks,
let's say -- on a CD-R today, play them all week, then
put more files on the same CD-R next week. You can do that
week after week until the disk fills up, recording on it
over and over again.
The bad news? You can't erase a
CD-R. Once it fills up using this
multiple-recording-session technique, it's full
forever.
And I probably ought to tell you the
other bad news. This method doesn't work for audio CDs.
You can't make them dribble by dribble.
But in most other ways,
"multi-session" CD recording works fine, but
practically nobody seems to know about it.
I think I know why. Back in the early
days of CD recording, CD burners were extremely expensive
-- maybe $3,000 at first, dropping down to a
"mere" $1,200 after a few years -- and blank CDs
were insanely out of sight. I remember my utter joy back in
the early 1990s when I located a store that was selling
blank CDs at a discount; I was able to buy them for $14 a
disk.
So everybody who made their own CDs
treasured them as if they were gold. The idea of wasting
any space on a CD was considered crazy, and the companies
that made CD recorders came up with an amazing improvement.
Instead of recording a CD in one session, CD burners were
reengineered to allow multiple recordings on a single disk.
All that was needed was to hold off on a crucial step in
the recording process until the disk was finally full.
That crucial step is called
"closing the disk." When you've added all the
files you want to a multi-session CD, you use a menu item
or toolbar button in your CD-burner software to close the
door on any more recording sessions.
Is that cool or what?
In the bad old days, many CD-ROM drives
had problems dealing with multi-session disks, but not any
more. Any computer, whether it is running Windows, Mac or
Linux, should be able to handle multi-session CDs without a
problem.
Your CD-writing software should have an
option for recording a session instead of a full disk. The
first time you do it is actually the hardest time, because
all CD-burner software is able to recognize a partially
recorded CD-R disk and should ask if you want to add
another session when you put such a CD into the burner.
Aside from the two drawbacks I mentioned
earlier, you should know about two other little
problems:
Each time you record another
session on a CD, you waste 13 megabytes of space on the
disk. That's the overhead needed when the software
creates a new directory.
Multisession CDs can sometimes
confuse CD and DVD players in your home stereo system.
As I pointed out, you can't make audio CDs this way,
but you can make MP3 CDs as multisession disks. If your DVD
player is less than a year old, it probably can play MP3
CDs, too. Make a standard MP3 CD (without multiple
sessions) and try playing it. Then make one multisession
MP3 CD and try it out before you make any more.
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