Hi all,

Just thought with the recent flurry of questions on CD-R's I'd kind of
post a little info.  If others feel my comments are contrary to their
experience, I won't feel offended.

1) None of the IDE CD-R's currently on the shelves have aproblem running
as a slave to a CD player.

2) You WILL have problems with older CD players reading CD-R/RW disks.
A rule of thumb is that anything below 24X is real iffy for reading
copies and backups.

3) As CD's do not copy byte by byte, data may be lost at any speed.

4) Anything really important should be backed up at 1X and anything
faster may turn your backup into a nightmare.  At 1X, your burner is
doing the best job it can.

5) I am comfortable backing up audio CD's for my car at 2X.  Data loss
on audio appears to pass by with no perceptible problem.

6) Program backups should be burned from an image on your hard drive and
never disk to disk.  It takes twice as long but provides the best
possible copy.

7) Use your burner to read the image to the hard drive.  They tend to be
more accurate than CD players.

8) When using an IDE burner, use alt-cnt-del to shut down everything
non-essential to your computer and that includes anti-virus, sound
cards,etc..  Failing to do this will inevitably produce a fine
collection of coasters to keep your coffee cups on.  You'll discover the
pleasure of the buffer overrun GUI if you don't believe!

9) Adaptec software is easy to use.  I use it for disk to disk copies of
audio.  For data, use CDRWin from Goldenhawk, or Nero from Ahead.  They
are both excellent programs.

10) When burning a CD, pretend you don't own a computer.  Walk away from
it and let it do its thing.  Check it visually to see how it's doing and
keep your hands to yourself.  Asking your computer to do anything else
will do nothing but increase your collection of coasters and empty jewel
cases.

Art Cassel

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