You can keep your digital hell

[venta]

An appeal to the technical cognoscenti:

A while ago, I bought some CD-Rs, made by Memorex, which claimed to be "audio compact discs" and warn on the packet, in big letters, "for music only".

Sadly, at the point of purchase, I failed to notice that they were CD-RWs - suitable for music they may be, but they won't play in the majority of CD players.

I'm now in need of a generic blank CD to put a data file on (it is, in fact, the bit of graphics I was faffing about with last night). Now, is it OK to disregard the large "for music only" warning ? I'm inclined to assume that the discs probably aren't much different from normal - and, while they may be in some way optimised for music (how?), they'll probably do just fine as data discs really.

Anyone have any idea ?

Comments

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Some googling suggests that these CDs have a bit set that standalone audio CD recorders insist be present before they will record on them; but that they are otherwise not special (they might have been more expensive though). Try it and see, I guess.

[broadmeadow.livejournal.com]

As I understand it (I have never actually used one of those discs) it's not that they are optimised for music; they just have a flag set on them somewhere which indicates that you have paid extra for them, which hi-fi component CD writers check for (you are paying a licence to rip-off music).

I would anticipate that they would work fine as regular data discs ... but check to see what (if any) speed they say they can be recorded at. The CD writers they were intended for would write very slowly, so in the absence of any other information I'd write them as slowly as you can.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Given that they're R/W I suggest writing one and... <drumroll> seeing if it works and you can read it back.

What ? You were expecting useful advice ?!

[eostar.livejournal.com]

I've used R/W CD's for data ... It's a bit hit and miss. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't ...

[wimble.livejournal.com]

I've a general paranoia about R/W disks. It may be out of date as the technology has stabalised, but my impression is that it's risky reading the disk back on a different drive than the one that wrote it (and some CD readers simply can't read rewritable disks at all).

I've also read one article which suggested that, for best results, the data should be written as slowly as possible. The reason for this is that the data should be stored as a series of vertically sided pits in the CD material. Since it takes a finite amount of time to create the pit, and the disk is constantly revolving, this is impossible. The faster the disk spins, the less vertical the edges are.

I don't know what level of error this can produce though, and I suppose there are counter arguments that say you should right the disk a fast as possible (before your arm gets tired and you drop the writer, for example ;-)

[waistcoatmark.livejournal.com]

Had no problems with RW be it CD, DVD- or DVD+ (stupid sodding format wars). AIUI, "music" CDR(W)s are the only type of disc that can be used in hi-fi CD-recorders. Both data discs and music discs play back fine in CD-players(*). So given 48x IDE CD writers are given away free in packets of creal these days and hi-fi CD writers were 1x speed and cost a couple of hundred quid, the difference between music and data CDR(W)s is a bit academic.

(*) with the obvious proviso that CD-Rs are a bit less reflective than shop-bought CDs and CD-RW's even less so, so some CD players have trouble reading them. But tht's got nothing to do with whether it's data or music disc.