rewritable CD question

[mikeymike]

I remember there used to be compatibility issues with rewritable CDs being read on other CD drives.  Does this problem still exist to any practical extent?  I've got a reasonably new drive (2 years old max, 40R 24W 10RW).  I've used it for CD-Rs up till now, and I can think of a few benefits of using RWs occasionally, but it would be extremely useful to be able to read the RWs in other machines, perhaps with older CD-ROM drives.

[Orjan]

I have never heard of a CD-ROM for a computer not being able to read a CD-RW disc, but I do know that some ( most? ) Cd-players in stereo systems wont read CD-RWs...

So I think you´re in the green, but perhaps someone else has experienced the problem you are afraid of?

[x56h34]

Usually drives which were produced before the existance of CD-RW media have problems reading it, or cannot read it at all.

[billchase]

I believe your mileage will vary.  I believe most
desktop CD-ROMS will be able to read a cd-rw.  I however
have had problems with older laptop drives.  Audio
CD-RWs in regular audio cd players is more inconsistent.
Since CD-RWs can be erased, you have nothing to lose
by experimenting with various drives.  I do recommend
you finalize your burned CD-RWs instead of using
multisession.  This will greatly help with compatibility.

C Snyder

[KennyR]

Every drive since 1998 should read CDRW, and quite a few before that too. Your drive/player has to be very old not to play the CDRWs.

[ACE]

It's all down to drive sensitivity.  The difference between on and off is less on a Rewritable CD Drive (3dB or 30dB, there's a three in there somewhere!).  Very old drives had good sensitivity, but tended to have trouble going at higher speeds, so they started lowering the sensitivity (and using cheaper components) so drive manufactures could set higher MAXIMUM read speed.  (Not that the drive ever reached that speed mind you!).

As someone said, when CD-RW came out drives had there sensitivity turned up again.  So in answer to your questions most of the very old drives work, the later ones all work, it's those in the middle that have trouble (we're talking about when 12 and 24 speed were top of the range).  Some work, some don't.  So unforunately you just have to suck it and see!

Any other questions about technology behind old hardware just ask!

[Matt_H]

I've found that burning at a very low speed (1x or 2x) will improve compatibility with older drives.

Why, I have no idea. It could have just been some bad media I was using, but it may be worth checking out.

[drwho]

About 5 years back I worked for a small software house that distributed their product on in-office burned CD-R's and we had a series of issues with this. After speaking to a guy at a company that worked on optical hardware we found that it was a common problem at the time.

I think that this has been fixed in drives that have been produced in the past few years. CD-RW's on the other hand are a different matter though. There are a few different technologies employed in CD-RW drives, (read, write and re-write all use different processes to do their thing).

Sorry, this is getting windy ...

I have a 3 year old Ricoh SCSI CD-RW drive on my A3000 and I have had many issues reading RW media on the drive via WB3.5. I have tried the built in stuff that comes with 3.5, AmiCDFS and some other PD driver and have had issues with all of them regardless of media type and quality. Normal CD-R media does not have an issue though.

I would like to know if there is an answer to this problem as well, since I am constantly moving files from my laptop to my A3000 and it is a waste of media. I would much rather use RW and be able to reecycle.

Thanks,
Mike

[whabang]

I've never encountered problems with CD-Rs, allthough there are a few older drives that might get problems with CD-RWs.

As someone else pointed out: Compatability is better when the CDs are burned at low speed.