Any way to burn data to a CD starting at the outside of the disc?

dguy6789

Diamond Member
Dec 9, 2002
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Hello.

I want to know if there are any programs that I could use to burn data to a disc but have the burning start at the outside edge of the disc instead of the inside. I have a Linux ISO I want to be burnt this way to be specific.
 

zerocool1

Diamond Member
Jun 7, 2002
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I don't see why you couldn't . I 'ves seen programs that let you burn designs onto the data side of the disc. I'm not sure if that's valid data or random 1's and 0's though.
 

WildW

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Oct 3, 2008
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Are you talking about burning a small amount of data (compared to the media capacity) to the outside edge for increased read speed? I know folks used to burn discs with a large garbage file at the start to pad out the space, followed by the bit they wanted. Not quite sure how it was done - maybe a multisession write, with a junk session first to fill out most of the space, followed by writing the bit you wanted into the remaining space.
 

dguy6789

Diamond Member
Dec 9, 2002
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Originally posted by: WildW
Are you talking about burning a small amount of data (compared to the media capacity) to the outside edge for increased read speed? I know folks used to burn discs with a large garbage file at the start to pad out the space, followed by the bit they wanted. Not quite sure how it was done - maybe a multisession write, with a junk session first to fill out most of the space, followed by writing the bit you wanted into the remaining space.

Exactly what I want. DSL is a very tiny live CD version of linux, and I'd just like to have the data be on the fastest part of the disc.
 

Yellowbeard

Golden Member
Sep 9, 2003
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If you are that concerned about what is likely a miniscule speed difference, I'd get a small fast SLC flash drive and make it bootable and put your image on it.
 

taltamir

Lifer
Mar 21, 2004
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interesting... it is worth testing to see if this is actually worthwhile...
I'd try what WildW suggested... make a session of junk, erase it, then make a new session of your data.
the reason they start at the inside is becuase disks rot/flake/fail from the outside inward. so longevity, they write from inside out.
 

dguy6789

Diamond Member
Dec 9, 2002
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All I know is when Nero does a data verification of the entire disc after a burn, it tells you how fast it does it and it is a lot faster at the end of the run than the beginning. I think it's like 24x at the inside of the disc vs 52x at the outside. If that's the case, running a live CD with data on the outside should be a lot faster than on the inside.
 

vj8usa

Senior member
Dec 19, 2005
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Originally posted by: dguy6789
If that's the case, running a live CD with data on the outside should be a lot faster than on the inside.

I thought Damn Small Linux loads itself entirely into RAM if you've got over 128MB of it? So having it on the outside of the disc might make the initial boot a bit quicker, but not much else.
 

Modelworks

Lifer
Feb 22, 2007
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It is doable but probably not worth the trouble. If you want to though you first need to understand how a disc is laid out.

Bootable cdrom use the ElTorito format.
Sector 0 starts at the inner ring.
Sector 16 primary volume
Sector 17 Boot record volume
~continues until volume terminates
Booting Catalog - list what boot images are on the disk and sends to the correct image.
Bootable Disk Image 1
Bootable Disk Image 2 - used if multiple boot options,
Cdrom image file - Your data files/programs

The boot information has to be at the inner ring, there is nowhere else the bios will look for it on the disc. So you have to burn that starting at the center. Once it is written and loads the first bootable disk image you can modify that image so that it looks for the data at the outer tracks. The space in between will be empty, unwritten data. This requires a drive that supports packet writing.

You would need to rewrite the boot image file, meaning you have to start with the source code .

This is similar to how simple copy protected cd protect data. If the only thing that knows where the data is located is the executable, then the cd drive has no way to know where to look for the data files.

You could pad out the data all the way to the edge with zeros but it wouldn't boot faster as the image will point to the start of the data, not the part where your programs start. So the cdrom will still have to read the entire track and would actually be slower since it has to read a lot more area.
I really doubt it is worth the effort just for a few seconds faster booting.

If this was not a bootable cd then you could use other methods like multisession to put the data where you want it.
 

dguy6789

Diamond Member
Dec 9, 2002
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Thanks for the information. Sounds like in this case I should probably just not bother.