Hi All
Hi!
In windows XP ,when you burned to CD ,XP always put the temp files on the
drive so you could look at them and edit them. In Vista it burns them
directly to the CD.
Not as far as I can tell; there's still a per-user holding bay that's
deeply-nested on C:
You have no chance to edit or look if you even have the
right files. Any one can make a mistake you know.
Is there a way to change this procedure.
With all files shown, I can see the buffered files, though not always
where I'd expect to. I haven't tried changing them, and would not be
surprised if I were to be blocked from doing so.
Originally, malware relied on diskettes to spread.
More recently, there's been a switch to network spread, both direct
(pure network worms, file share invaders) and on a store-and-forward
(e.g. email) spread.
But we are now seeing a renewed interest in spread via removable
disks; mainly USB sticks, but could also be done via pending optical
disk dumps, if malware could write to that store.
Writing to USB sticks is like a pure network attack, in that the
opportunity has to be there at the time. If not online, a pure
network attack will fail. If there's no USB stick inserted, then
attempts to infect it will fail.
Pending writes to optical disks is more like email attack. A dial-up
user who connects for 10 minutes a day to get email is just as easy to
attack via email as an always-on broadband user, and malware-infected
pending dumps to optical disks offer similar advantages.
You can relocate the optical disk buffer location in Vista somewhat
more easily than in XP, but this doesn't do what you'd expect it to
do. Material is still copied to a wretched location on C:, and only
while the burn is in process, does it pass through the buffer you
relocated off C:, in the form of inscrutible temp files.
Let's look at just how ugly this is, if you do this:
- you shrink C: to a small size for speed and other efficiencies
- you store bulky material to be DVD'd etc. off C: on (say) E:
Here's what should happen:
- you relocate the optical disk buffer to E:
- you burn material on E: to DVD
- pointers to the material are copied to the buffer on E:
- the material is written to DVD
- the pointers are deleted
Here's what does happen:
- you relocate the optical disk buffer to E:
- but Vista *still* holds pending writes in C:
- you burn material on E: to DVD
- the entire bulk of material is copied to be held in C:
- C: is now crushed for free space
- the entire bulk of material is copied to the buffer back on E:
- you burn material from this buffer on E: to DVD
- the bulky material is deleted from C:
- the bulky temp material is deleted from buffer on E:
Given that the Nero Express 6 shipping with brand-new Samsung DVD
writer stock is not compatible with Vista, and that neither Samsung
nor Nero offer a compatibility update, I was forced to try Vista's
native support for writing optical disks.
At first, it looked good; a clearer explanation of "mastering" vs.
packet writing, support for some packet-writing standards, a "front
door" ability to relocate the buffer to somewhere with more space,
etc. But it's just as confusing, with difficulty in knowing when
material is actually written to disk as opposed to being left lying
around on the hard drive.
It's buggy, too. There are times when nothing appears to be
happening, and yet the optical drive is "locked" so that you can't
eject the disk because it is "in use". Attempts to burn to disk fail
because the drive is "in use" from the last time you tried to do that,
and nothing appeared to happen.
The only way to free up the drive is to shutdown Vista. When you then
look at the disk in another system, you may or may not see what you
thought you'd written to disk, on the disk. Even where the write has
worked, you find "ghost shortcuts" to the same material will appear as
added to whatever optical disk you have in the drive.
You have no idea whether there is still bloated gunk hanging around in
the buffers, or whether this gunk is in C: or the buffer you'd
relocated off C:. It's really horrible, in my limited experience.
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Saws are too hard to use.
Be easier to use!
