From: "Don Penlington"

clipped

> If the data is important, you are probably aware that it pays to buy good 
> quality disks, as the cheaper no-name ones tend to lack proper protective 
> coatings. It's best to burn at least one step less than the maximum speed, 
> to reduce errors.
> 
> After burning, do some random checks on the CD data to make sure you have 
> been successful.

Note that for CDs, the rated speed of the DISK is not embedded on the disk
where the "burning drive" can see it, and adjust to it...
It is only on the packaging, or "printed" on the disk...
I think you can lock a drive to a maximum speed somewhere in Windows...
(I still have 1X disks that would be happy to burn at 40X or so, but likely not work...)

On DVDs speed is locked to a certain "range" by the drive firmware,
(right or wrong, BTW, so upgrade your firmware if you can get any...)

I like burning all my CDs or DVD in a program that will read them right away
to verify them... I buy decent blanks, but still get about 1 or 2 % bad burns...
Since I value what I an burning, I want to know right away if anything went wrong...
(This doubles the time it takes, but I am in no rush...)
Note with a CD burning program, you get to pick your burn speed each time.

                                                              Rick Glazier

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