CD-RW drive

[peter beatty]

when enquiring about buying a 15" PB at my local shop, i was asking if i could use the CD - RW drive like a floppy as on PC laptops. the assistant seemed to think that on apple machines you had to reformat the CD before each new save, ie unable to update already saved files as you can on a floppy. i was hoping someone could clarify this for me before i make the switch.

cheers

pete

 

[celaurie]

I'm probably not the best one to answer this one as I'm not the most technically minded, but what the Apple tech told you is correct.

Even with re-writeable media you have to erase it before burning/adding new contents to the disk.

So far I've never heard of a CD-RW drive that lets you treat a CD like a floppy.

Chris

 

[strider42]

I think apple's software requires you to do that. I'm pretty sure toast will allow you to do session burning so you can add to an already burned disk. Its not quite like a floppy though, sicne to change something thats already burned on there would require a reformat of the disk I think, it just allows you to add to the disk. I'm not aware of software to allow it to work like a floppy does exactly

 

[jxyama]

Here's the skinny as far as I know...

Other guys are correct, CD-RW has to be erased first in a Mac...
I know my gf's PC (a Dell laptop) can do a multi-session burn on CD-R (not just CD-RD) until the disk is full. You can't do quite the same in a Mac.

If you have Toast, you can do multi-session burn without erasing.

If you use Finder to burn a CD, you can only burn once on CD-R and multiple times but preceded by a disk erase on CD-RW. These CDs can be read by a PC.

If you use the Disk Image to burn a CD, you can do multi-session burn on a Mac. But these CDs won't be readable by PC. When you put this disk into a Mac, each burn will show up as a separate CD on the desktop.

 

[ftaok]

Originally posted by celaurie
So far I've never heard of a CD-RW drive that lets you treat a CD like a floppy.

Chris

What Peter is referring to is "DirectCD". With DirectCD, you can use a CD-RW just like you would a floppy disk. You can save a file over and over without erasing it. It's actually pretty neat.

However, Direct CD is not available on the Mac. And there are no plans by anyone to get it working on the Mac. BTW, I think that Roxio created DirectCD and they tried for a while to get it working on the Mac, but they couldn't.

 

[aethier]

Just fo like me, use roxio toast, and you could treat a cd rw as a floppy, in the "other" section of toast, you select "iso 9something" and you could keep adding new files, updating current ones. works like a charm

aethier

 

[crazzyeddie]

Go into toast and clikc on the help thing. When the help viewer comes up, on the left side you will see something about making incremental backups. You use the iso 9660 format, with some other stuff.

 

[iJon]

i think microsoft has some technology called mt rainer that lets you use cds like floppies, dont know if it ever got implemented though.

iJon