Many people use Linux to burn CD-ROMs, because it is reliable and easy. No bluescreens while burning and no headaches about getting the right combination of hard- and software. It just works once properly set up. The CD-writing HOWTO explains the setup, how to put data on the media and gives some interesting applications kindly submitted by the readers.
Copyright Winfried Trümper 1996,1997,1998,1999. All rights reserved.
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Short: read and use at your own risk.
The CD-R FAQ is a general FAQ about compact-disk recordables (CD-R), CD-writers and the required software.
As most CD-writers can be used to read CD-ROMs, too, you may want to read the Linux CD-ROM HOWTO, the Linux SCSI HOWTO and the Linux Kernel HOWTO.
CD-ROM stands for Compact Disc Read Only Memory, a storage medium utilizing an optical laser to sense microscopic pits on a silver shimmering disk. The silver shimmering comes from an aluminized layer which is the carrier. The pits represent the bits of the information (in some way) and are so petite that some billions of them fit on the disc. Thus a CD is a mass-storage medium.
The term CD-R is a short form of CD-ROM recordable and refers to a CD that doesn't have those "microscopic pits" on it's surface. Thus it's empty. Instead of the silver aluminium layer a CD-R has a special film (colored) into which "microscopic pits" can be burned in. This is done by giving the laser which normally only senses the pits a little bit more power so he burns the pits. This action can only be taken once on a CD-R, although you can leave out some areas for later writing, creating a so called multi-session CD.
The CD-ROM rewritable (short: CD-RW) was developed to come around the limitation of CD-R media. Here the laser can not even burn pits into the media, but it can also melt the media back into it's original state. This is possible, because the laser does not really burn holes into the media - you do not see a puff of smoke while burning and no voice from above tells you "target destroyed". What the laser really does is to trigger a phase change, thus the name "phase change devices" for CD-RW-writers. An example for a very similar technique used in daily life is the cleaning car in an ice-hockey stadion: during the pauses of the game, the car drives over the ice and fills the scratches in the ice (-> bits containing some sort of information about the game... hehehe) with melted splinter.
This HOWTO deals with the task of writing CD-Rs and CD-RWs. Welcome on board, captain.
The detailed list of models which have been reported to work or not to work under various Unix-like operating systems is available online from http://www.guug.de:8080/cgi-bin/winni/lsc.pl.
Here is a comprehensive summary of drives known to work with cdrecord:
Acer: CDRW 6206A
BTC: BCE 621E (IDE)
Compro: CW-7502, CW-7502B
Dysan: CRW-1622
Elite: Elite b444.41
Grundig: CDR 100 IPW
Guillemot: Maxi CD-R 4X/8X
HP: SureStore 4020i, SureStore 6020i,
C4324, C4325
CD-Writer+ 7100, CD-Writer+ 7200i,
CD-Writer+ 8100i, CD-Writer+ 8110i,
Hi-Val: CDD-3610
JVC: XR-W2001, XR-W2010, XR-W2042, R-2626
Kodak: PCD 200, PCD 225, PCD 260, PCD 600
Matsushita: CW-7502
Memorex: CRW-620, CRW-1622
Microboards: PlayWrite 2000, PlayWrite 4000RW, PlayWrite 4001RW
MicroNet: MasterCD Plus 4x4, MasterCD Plus 4x6
Mitsubishi: CDRW-226
Mitsumi: CR-2401-TS, CR-2600 TE, CR-2801 TE, CR-4801 TE
Nomai: 680.RW
OTI: CDRW 965
Olympus: CDS 615E, CDS 620E
Optima: DisKovery 650 CD-R
OTI: CDRW 965
Panasonic: CW-7502, CW-7582
Philips: CDD-521/10, CDD-522
CDD-2000, CDD-2600, CDD-3600, CDD-3610
Omniwriter 26, Omniwriter 26A
Plasmon: CDR 480, CDR 4220, RF-4100, RF-4102, CDR 4400
Plextor: CDR PX-24 CS, PX-412 C, PX-R412 C
PX-R810Ti, PleXwriter 412C
Procom: PCDR 4
Ricoh: RO-1420C+, MP 1420C, MP 6200S, MP 6201S
Sanyo: CRD-R24S
Smart and
Friendly: CD-RW226, CD-R1002, CD-R1002/PRO, CD-R1004,
CD-R2004, CD-R2006 PLUS, CD-R2006 PRO,
CD-R4000, CD-R4006, CD-R4012
Sony: CDU 920S, CDU 924, CDU 926S, CDU-928E,
CDU 948S, CDRX 100E
Taiyo Yuden: EW-50
TEAC: CD-R50S, CD-R55S, CDR-55S
Traxdata: CRW 2260, CDR 4120, CDRW 4260,
Turtle Beach: 2040R
WPI (Wearnes): CDRW-622, CDR-632P
YAMAHA: CDR-100, CDR 102, CDR-200, CDR-200t, CDR-200tx
CDR-400, CDR-400c, CDR-400t, CDR-400tx, CDR-400Atx
CRW-2260, CRW-2260t,
CRW-4250tx, CRW-4260 t, CRW-4260 tx, CRW-4261,
CRW-4416 S
Table 1: CD-writers supported under Linux
If your hardware isn't supported you can still use Linux to create an image of the later CD. You may wish to do so because most DOS-software cannot deal with RockRidge-Extensions. But then you have to use DOS-Software to write the image to the CD-R.
There are two classes of utilities for writing CD-Rs: the hardware-drivers and the data-formatters. The hardware drivers support the following features:
Supported Feature cdwrite-2.1 cdrecord-1.6
------------------------------------------------
IDE/ATAPI no yes
Parallel Port no yes
CD-RW no yes
Multisession only partial yes
Table 2:
cdwrite is an old software only referenced for
completeness. Please use cdrecord instead, as it
supports a wider range of hardware and has significantly
more features. The purpose of the data-formatters is to
organise the data on the media ("put a filesystem on it").
Feature mkisofs mkhybrid
--------------------------------------------
ISO 9660 yes yes
RockRidge yes yes
El Torito yes yes
HFS no yes
Joliet no yes
Table 3:
The most obvious difference of the ISO 9660 filesystem compared to the Extended-2 filesystem is, that you can't modify files once they are written to the media. The limitations of the ISO-9660-filesystem are:
RockRidge is an extension to allow longer filenames and a deeper directory hierarchy for the ISO-9660 filesystem. These extensions are not available when reading the CD-ROM under DOS or the Windows-family of operating systems.
El Torito can be used to produce bootable CD-ROMs. The BIOS of your PC must support this feature, too. Roughly speaking, the first 1.44 Mbyte of the CD-ROM contain a floppy-disk image supplied by you. This image is treated like a floppy by the BIOS and booted from.
HFS lets a Macintosh read the CD-ROM as if it were an HFS volume (the native filesystem for MacOS).
Joliet brings long filenames (among other things) to newer variants of Windows (95, 98, NT). The author knows of no tool to have long filenames under plain DOS or Windows 3.11.
Section 2.8 lists the availability of the mentioned software.
If you want to join the development team (with the intention
to actively help them), send e-mail to
cdwrite-request@other.debian.org and put the word subscribe in
body of the message.
The newest version of this document is always available from http://www.guug.de/~winni/linux/.