15 – Using CD-R/CD-RW

December 5, 2009 – 10:16 pm

Please note… This information no longer exists at the referenced locations.  This is only a copy of what was available in 2003.

Basic Linux Training™

Using CD-R/CD-RW

Henry White

Table of Contents

Hardware

If you have a SCSI CD-writer that is recognized during boot-up and can be accessed like a CD-ROM drive, you can start burning CDs once you have the proper CD-recorder software package installed – cdrecord or xcdroast, for example. Things get a little more complicated if you have an EIDE CD-writer – the problem being all the drivers are for SCSI.

To use your EIDE CD-writer you have to append a line in /etc/lilo.conf to pass the appropriate hardware parameters to the kernel during boot, for example:

    append=" hdc=ide-scsi"

the run /sbin/lilo. Then you will have to ensure that SCSI emulation is loaded during boot and reset the symlink for the CD-write, for example:

    ln -sf /dev/scd0 /dev/cdrom

As pointed out in the HOWTO, you *may* have problem with automatic hardware detection if you are booting into Linux with loadlin.

Media

One area where many people are penny-wise and pound foolish is in buying the cheapest CD-R and CD-RW blanks they can find. There is a difference in the coating and deposition process, and how much attention to quality control the manufacturer put into the manufacturing processes, how closely these processes are monitored, etc.

Verbatim had a white paper on CD-R, which said, in part:

If you’re lucky, you only know the media is bad after you have stored a number of files or produced your own MP3 audio CD and try to play them on the recorder or on another CD player. If you’re unlucky, you find out that the media has gone bad six months later when you attempt to recover the data that is now stored only on the CD-R or CD-RW media.

To protect themselves, buyers need to know:

  • Will media from manufacturer X record at the desired speed?
  • Will it perform well at that speed?
  • Will the disk, once recorded, be readable on the wide variety of players available?
  • Will it retain data, over time, under less than ideal conditions?
  • What type of guarantee does the manufacturer provide with its product?

Let’s begin by putting cost differences in perspective.

Despite the fact that CD-R and CD-RW disk quality and capabilities can differ widely, disk costs vary by only a few cents and can store a volume of data. For example, a single 650MB CD (-R or -RW) will hold 74 minutes of audio, 45 minutes of MPEG-2 video, 5,400 photos, 50,000 or four 4-drawer filing cabinets of documents. The time expended in gathering this much information can be substantial.

The cost of a disk is really irrelevant. What really matters is the value of the data that will be recorded on it. How important is it? How long must it be kept? What would be the cost, in time and money, to replace it? The fact is, if data is valuable enough to be put on a CD-R or CD-RW disk, the real issue is whether the disk can be trusted–not how much it costs.

I would strong recommend that you only buy a small quantity (five or less) and test it before you commit yourself to a particular brand. There are wide variations from brand to brand, and wide variations from one production run to another in the lower-priced brands. There are glaring discrepancies in ‘portability’ from one machine to another.

Anything worth burning on a CD will obviously fall into one of two categories: the ‘archival’ – the really important files that are valuable and in many instances irreplaceable, and the ‘non-archival’ – things that take up a lot of space, and you’re essentially using the CD as a convenient and temporary transport. Archival material you want to put on high quality media, so you’ll have to spend a little more for it; it will depend entirely on how much non-archival material you have whether it is worthwhile buying and maintaining a supply of another brand that’s slightly cheaper.

Assignments

Terms and Concepts:

  • ATIP
  • CD-R/RW
  • CDDB
  • DAO mode
  • DVD
  • EL Torito extension
  • FIFO
  • ISO-9660
  • Joliet extension
  • Rock Ridge extension
  • SCSI emulation
  • TAO
  • burn-proof
  • coaster
  • filling tracks
  • laser
  • loop device
  • multi-session
  • overburn
  • overlap
  • packet writing
  • phase change
  • pink noise
  • pre-gap
  • recoding speed
  • sector accumulation
  • sector burst
  • simulated burn
  • track
  • white noise
  • cdrdao
  • cdrecord
  • cdroast
  • cdwrite
  • mkisofs
  • mkhybrid
  • mkvcdfs
  • xcdroast
  • /dev/cdrom
  • /dev/dsp
  • /etc/modules.conf

Online:

Copyright © 1997-2003 Henry White. All Rights Reserved.
Reproduction or redistribution without prior written consent is strictly prohibited. Address comments and inquiries to info@basiclinux.net

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