Hi,
There are two types of CD currently on the market. One is a CDW which
are your basic, use once (burn) and that's it CD's, and the others are
CDRW which are re writable CD's.
The Use Once CD's are exactly that. You do not format them and once
they are burnt, that's it, they are done. Even if you only put one
picture on there and the whole rest of the disk is completely blank,
it's done. Can not re-burn them or use them again, except to see that
one picture you have on there.
These types are good for photo collections and document collections.
Things that are not going to be changed, and you want to keep for a
very long time. They are also pretty cheap, as you can get them now
for about .75 a piece in some cases or buy them in large bulk.
The CDRW disks are much different. Yes, these have to be formatted as
Read Write Disks. If they are not formatted like this, then they get
"burnt" and become CDR's. This may have happened with the disk you
refer to in your question or it may just be a bad disk.
These disks, once formatted properly can be altered and used just like
your hard-drive (albeit a very slow hard drive). They are typically
very sensitive disks, meaning that a disk working in your computer on
your drive, may not work on someone else's computer even though they
have a CDWR drive. Also, they can loose their formatting pretty easy,
and have to be reformatted. This of course destroys any files that
were on that disk.
These disks are normally used for temporary backups, and storage of
items that will probably change (project files, documents that change,
excel spreadsheets) and do not need to be kept for a very long time,
or if they got destroyed, could be replaced.
If this doesn't completely answer your question, please use the
clarify option and let me know the type of disk you are using, the
name of the CD drive (brand and number) the software you are using to
create the cd's and what operating system is on your computer.
Thanks,
webadept-ga |
Clarification of Answer by
webadept-ga
on
28 Nov 2002 13:09 PST
Hi Dave,
If you are storing photos it is probably better to use the CD-W disks,
which are the ones that are written once and that's it, no more usage.
You will be able to send those via email from the disk and print them.
You may copy the file from that CD and alter it with photoshop, and
then save the altered photo to your hard drive. You will not be able
to save to the CD disk any changes that you make. It is Read Only,
which basically means what it says. This is good because you will
always have the original in the original condition. I don't know how
much photo editing you do, but I've been in the position that I really
wish I had the original so many times I don't like to think of them
all. :-)
These are also the easiest to use. I have the same drive you do and
the software that comes with it is pretty good. You may want to look
into getting a package called Roxio Easy CD Creator. This is a very
good software package and works well with that drive. You can find
information on this package at :
http://www.roxio.com/
It is a little expensive but if you do burning and saving as much as I
do it is well worth the money in time saved and hassle factor. I don't
normally recommend software but this one I'm comfortable suggesting,
I've used it for years and never had a problem.
If you are formatting a CD then you are using a Read Write CD (thank
you to the commentary below who pointed out my typo there) If you
format, then this is a disk that will probably only work on the drive
that created it, it may work on other computers but I wouldn't count
on it, burn a Read Only if you are taking your photos to the families
house to show them off.
One other thing I have found is that you want to purchase Read Only
disks that are designed for the speed your HP is burning at. Some of
the slower disks I've found some problems with.
Thanks again,
webadept-ga
|
