Format CD's/DVD's

  • Thread starter Thread starter dehard
  • Start date Start date
dehard said:
Anyone tell how to format a cd or dvd in windows xp home sp2?
Click to expand...

You would only format a disk for use with packet writing sofetware such as
Nero's InCd or Roxio's Drag toDisk.
 
XP's built in burning software "formats" prior to writing. It uses the
ISO9660/Joliet Format. This differs greatly from packet writing software
which uses the UDF format. If you want packet writing you will need to
purchase third party software to do that. Read the info here for a better
understanding http://aumha.org/win5/a/xpcd.htm
 
I am trying to back up my quicken software to a I/O magic drive recently
installed, and I get the message that the disk is writeable. I'm using maxell
dvd-rw. I thought if I formatted the disk then it would backup. Any
suggestions? Thanks for your replys.
 
You will need packet writing software if you want to backup directly from
Quicken to disk. Personally I'm not a fan of packet writing software and
have used most versions of it over the years. As a whole I find these
programs prone to producing system lockups and typically the backups fail,
often sooner than later. In my opinion you'd be better of getting an
external hard drive and backing up to it then periodically burning your
backups to disk using the ISO9660/Joliet process (programs like Nero, Roxio,
free CDBurnerXP, etc.)

Most packet writing software constantly rewrites to the TOC (or Table of
Contents). An area on the optical disk that points your drive to the
location of files. So a standard rewriteable disk will have one area of it
rewritten to over and over again. If the TOC become damaged then the disk is
unreadable and your data is not readily accessible. The other main problem
with packet writing software is that not all of the data gets written at the
time of the save. Some of the data is held in memory and written just prior
to the disk being ejected. If you always to remember to eject the disk
shortly after it was written to you are fine (with the exception of the
first point I made). But if the computer locks up and you have to do a hard
reboot then the data held in memory doesn't get written to the disk. This
can be critical info and once again you end up with an unreadable disk.

There is a solution of sorts and that is to have good CD/DVD recovery
software. ISOBuster (full version) can read unreadable disks and extract
files from them. There are a couple of other programs that can do this as
well. One being DVD/CD-R Diagnostics and the other Multi Data RescueT v2.1.
I've had to use all three on occasion.

If you choose to use packet writing software the most common versions are
InCD from Nero, Drag to Disc from Roxio and DLA from Argentum. Personally
I'd go with DLA if I had to.
 
Thank you. Your reply really helps me understand what's going on with the
programs and what I need to do. I was very confusseedd about backup's before.
Thanks again.
 
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