Re: Burning a CD/DVD

Geoffrey S. Mendelson <gsm@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

It depends upon where you plan to read the disk. All modern CD burners
and all DVD burners have a system which prevents problems due to the
computer not having the data ready when it is needed. This is called
a data underrun. There are several names for this such as "simple link",
"burnproof" and so on.

The method is not 100% compliant with the original CD specifications,
so old audio CD players and CD drives in computers may not read the disks
properly. If you are burning a disk to be read in anything made this century,
you should be ok.

If you are buring a disk for that old '286 PC or 680x0 or Nubus PPC Mac,
then you might have a problem. A good rule of thumb is to never burn a disk
faster than it will be read. The obvious exception is if your drive has
a minimum burn speed, you have to use it.

I'm paranoid though, and always close everything else except the burning
program. If the files are local, I burn at maximum speed, if they are
on a network drive, then I use 8x for CDs and 4x (equivalent to CD 16x)
for DVDs.

For old computers media choice is significant. I have some Verbatim
52x CD-ROM blanks that can be read on some old drives, but not all
(one Yamaha 4x burner can write them, but not read the disks it writes).
I also have some Teac disks marked 12x-48x, which can be read and written
at 1x, 2x, 4x, and up by all of the drives I have, going back to a
1991 Toshiba.

To sumamrize, if you are using a modern Mac with a Combo DVD/CD burner,
and intend to read it on anything relatively modern, don't worry.

I think you'll find that this isn't answering the OPs question
(interesting as your information may be). His question was simply
whether or not it was safe to carry on using his Mac for other purposes
whils the burn was going on in the background.

--
Adrian
.

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