Orange County Register

The North Orange County Computer Club helps The Gadgetress tackle the multitude of readers cries for help. NOCCC group has experts in Windows, Word and all sorts of computer topics. Visit the club’s site at noccc.org. To get this answer delivered to your computer automatically, sign up for the e-mail update HERE.

Question: I am having problems with a CD-RW disc on my Dell Inspiron 5150 laptop. Over a period of about 3 months, I wrote a large number of files (.jpg and Microsoft Word) onto a CD-RW. There were probably 10 folders with umpteen files of about 82 MB – or less than 12 percent of the available space.

A couple of days ago, while writing another .jpg file to the disc, the program suddenly said that the disk could not be written on, and was probably “unusable.” This has happened before, but on those occasions I immediately rewrote that particular file and burned it to CD without further ado. This time… nothing.

When I tried to run the CD after the mishap, only 1 folder of about 20 files was seen, and it was not the new folder that I had been trying to write in. It was just one of the previous folders.

From the “Properties” tab, I could see the disc had only 419 KB of total space, and that this last folder itself occupied 419 KB. Mighty strange! On my trying to run it again and again, the disc at first indicated that it now contained no folder at all, and finally seemed to just get hung up. Help!

NOCCC: There is a simple solution to your basic problem but no simple answer to your question of why the problem occurred. The solution is to accumulate your files (up to about 600 megabytes) in a folder on your computer’s internal hard disk and/or an external hard drive. Then write them all at once in a single session to the CD. This will give you the back up of your files you want and avoid the problem you encountered.

A common misunderstanding of a CD-RW Rewritable disk is that you can use it like a hard disk. With qualifications, that is partially true. If you purchase an optical media burning program suite like Nero 8 and learn how to use the Packet Writing function, you can use a CD-RW as a Read-Write-Erase piece of media, but it acts more like a large floppy disk.

The more common usage of a CD-RW is as a regular CD-R that can be completely erased many times and used again as a blank CD-R. If your intent is to archive your files, it is better to use a CD-R than a CD-RW.

You were using your CD-RW in a Multisession Mode. The CD was invented as a Single Session device. Multisession Mode is a work-around to the limitations of the original concept. Each session on a CD requires a Lead In segment, a Data segment, and a Lead Out segment. This overhead cost to the total capacity of the CD, for each session that you write to the CD-R, consumes between 22 and 14 MB per session for even a tiny data file.

It is amazing how many different formats today’s DVD and CD burners have to know how to deal with and, considering that, how inexpensive they are. With special software, you can read the previous sessions on your CD-RW disk and recover your files. If you would like to get a taste of how complex burning a CD can be, try this site at tinyurl.com/5obctd to get a taste with a minimum of Geek Speak.

~ Jim Sanders, President, NOCCC

Have your own quandary? E-mail gadgetress@ocregister.com and put “Help ME!” in the subject line. Please include your computer’s operating system and amount of memory. Visit the archive at ocregister.com/gadgetress/stump

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