direct cd problems

[natch]

I keep some files on a CD-RW and keep it in my bag which I transport
back and forth between work and home. My pc came with roxio cd creator
which I understand is also known as Direct CD. I formatted the disks,
long format. I am up to my third disk, I keep them clean, grab the
edges. Yet after a while it gets to a point where a variety of strange
things happen. Files are missing, I cant copy a file off of the disk,
it says the disk is read only, it wont let me change the attributes. I
try a new disk and it seems to happening quicker each time. Now I
tried a DVD-RW (not that I need that much room but it's all I had
available in the house. And it happened within one day. It says read
only, wont copy a file to it, a file is missing on my work pc that was
on the disk when I had it home. I understand when you first format
with direct cd it hides itself and a udf reader on the disk so when
you use it on another pc it installs it there.

This is getting very frustrating and I have lost important files. I
like roxio cd creator evry much fo rmaking music cd's but I am
thinking of just deleting the program. Would that help. If I just
deleted the program and put in a new disc and formatted from windows
explorer what would it do different.

I have w98 at work and xp at home, any suggestions would be much
appreciated

 

[Malke]

I keep some files on a CD-RW and keep it in my bag which I transport
back and forth between work and home. My pc came with roxio cd creator
which I understand is also known as Direct CD. I formatted the disks,
long format. I am up to my third disk, I keep them clean, grab the
edges. Yet after a while it gets to a point where a variety of strange
things happen. Files are missing, I cant copy a file off of the disk,
it says the disk is read only, it wont let me change the attributes. I
try a new disk and it seems to happening quicker each time. Now I
tried a DVD-RW (not that I need that much room but it's all I had
available in the house. And it happened within one day. It says read
only, wont copy a file to it, a file is missing on my work pc that was
on the disk when I had it home. I understand when you first format
with direct cd it hides itself and a udf reader on the disk so when
you use it on another pc it installs it there.

This is getting very frustrating and I have lost important files. I
like roxio cd creator evry much fo rmaking music cd's but I am
thinking of just deleting the program. Would that help. If I just
deleted the program and put in a new disc and formatted from windows
explorer what would it do different.

I have w98 at work and xp at home, any suggestions would be much
appreciated

Leave Roxio on your hard drive but get rid of Direct CD and stop using
CD-RW's. Buy a USB thumb drive instead to carry your files back and
forth. Use CD-R's (not CD-RW's) to back up your work.

Malke

 

[Alex Nichol]

I keep some files on a CD-RW and keep it in my bag which I transport
back and forth between work and home. My pc came with roxio cd creator
which I understand is also known as Direct CD. I formatted the disks,
long format. I am up to my third disk, I keep them clean, grab the
edges. Yet after a while it gets to a point where a variety of strange
things happen. Files are missing, I cant copy a file off of the disk,
it says the disk is read only, it wont let me change the attributes. I
try a new disk and it seems to happening quicker each time. Now I
tried a DVD-RW (not that I need that much room but it's all I had
available in the house. And it happened within one day

That packet writing approach is basically flawed, because whenever you
change or create a file it rewrites the sectors that hold directories -
and this means a remarkably high number of writes to those, and they
wear out easily. I have really given up on it as something to use.
With the low price of CD-R (or DVD+-R) disks, it is effective to write
batches as needed, using say Easy DC Creator (not the Direct CD that
comes along, and which you have been using) and when the disk gets full,
junk it
Or you could do the same on RW disks, and when full and no longer
containing anything of use, erase the disk as a whole

 

[Darrell S]

Roxio CD Creator is not also know as Direct CD. Direct CD is just one
available function of EZ CD. It is flawed.
It does allow you to write directly to the CD without opening EZ CD each
time. If you can accept the screw ups, that's OK. But it is much more
reliable to open EZ CD and use its Explore-like directory to write the files
to your CD-RW.
You don't need to pre-format your CDs for this. It will write on a CD just
taken from your new CDs.

Some computers can't read a CD unless it has been "finalized" so if your at
work computer is one of those you lose the benefits of a CD-RW since, once
it's finalized you can't write to it again. CD-Rs are so cheap you can use
those to write your files. I do that a lot. At work we don't have a
CD-writer to put things on the CD there to bring home. So I have some
floppies and use PK-Zip to zip the files to multiple floppies and use my
PK-unZip at home to put them on my computer.

If your home and at work computers have USB capability it is much easier to
buy a USB "thumb" drive and use it to carry the files back and forth.
They're pretty cheap if you can get by with 32MB and USB 1.1. You can
read/write directly to them just like a floppy but they are much faster and
have much more memory. Do a Yahoo or Google search for USB thumb and see
what you like. Here's one I got there. http://www.usb007.com/