burning cd's bigger than 700MB - somebody MUST know....

[wuzza]

hi,

i've looked on forums all over the net to no avail, but since joing anandtech, i've received great advice twice. they say three is a charm, so here goes.....

i'm trying to burn files, specifically divx movie files to cd. i bought cd-r's that purport to be 730mb, 800mb, 900mb, yet my software doesn't recognize them. Was I conned when buying the cd's or do they exist. I've seen them selling in reputable retailers online, so I assume the problem is with my hardware or my software.

Firstly hardware. i've searched websites for any file that might be an update driver, or even address this problem. couldn't find any. The cd burner in question is a Toshiba DVD Rom CD RW combo model number: SD R2-102

teh software I am using is either Easy CD creator or Nero Burning Rom, both of which I find superb for under 700MB burning. I am willing to try anything, so no suggestion or opinion will go untried

thank you

 

[viper118]

wow, since when was bigger capacity cd's released???

just a question, what brand are those cds??

if they are released and in stores, then the best thing to do is find a driver that will enable you to burn that much data onto a cd.. if therre is one, it should be on your manufacturer's official website...

 

[wuzza]

manufacturer of cd drive or of teh cd-r's themselves?

To be honest I never even thought of going to the cd-r websites. I will check them out. The ones I bought are kinda generic, but the store had more expensive name ones.

I can't remember exactly the companies involved, but i'll go back and find out.

thanks for the idea.

 

[randomlinh]

afaik, you just force the porgram to burn. you just need to keep an eye out and make sure you stay w/in your limits. in nero, you have to check the overburn option i think.

as for the cd's, they're legit. dunno about 740MB, but 90/99 minute cds do exist. altho some burners don't like to burn to the full capacity i've heard.

 

[stevewm]

Technically going over 650MB is violating the stanard. However 700MB has pretty much been accepted as it does not stretch the standard by much and the majority of CD drives have no trouble reading them.

In Nero you will have to enable overburning to be able to burn 700MB to the disc. Do this by going to File, Prerferences, Expert Features tab, tick Enable Overburning, set the time to 99 minutes.

Nero will now alow you to burn a 700MB CD. Stop adding files when the gauge on the bottom reaches the 80 minute mark.

 

[rbV5]

Capacity of CD's depends on what mode you burn it in. DVDR help is our friend.

 

[deran]

Do what steve said about changing the overburn feture and change to 99 minutesin NERO. You must burn in Disc-at-once.
I burned Matrix reloaded in 700 mb cd. The file was 730mb.

 

[Mday]

you will have to confirm that your burner allows this as well. this is a hardware problem more than a software problem, a search in google will help you.

 

[TheCorm]

I bought a batch of 800mb/90 min CD-R's by Intenso and they seem to work well for various DIVX movies I have that won't fit on conventional 'size' CD-R's.

Weird but Nero detects them as 10 min CD's!!!...I just enabled overburning...gives a scary message saying something like "capacity of the CD is 88mb....you are trying to burn 770mb"...something like that, but overburn worked superb (Lite-ON 48x Burner).

And with my generic 700mb CD-R's have overburned to about 710mb.

Jamie

p.s: overburning may damage the CD-R and/or CD-Writer, but I haven't seen this yet, if you are planning for an 800mb discs then definately worth going for these higher capacity ones and no trying to overburn a 700mb by x amount.

 

[wuzza]

yeah i have to admit that Nero's warning about overburning did slightly worry me, especially as the drive is our household's DVD player too....has anyone damaged their drive using this?

We had some CD-r's marked 730MB bought in new ZEaland. They worked fine without checking the overburn option. Bought some over here (korea) marked 730mb but they don't fit more than 703MB. i'm wondering if it was a typo and should i get my money back (although they were REALLY cheap)

One other question, if you are overburning, do you have to limit the speed of the drive?

 

[nickaskew]

Overburning:
A few pieces of software support 'over burning' which is the process of placing more data on the CD than was originally intended. Lets say you have 2 cd's, 1 pupporting to support 700MB and the other supports 800MB, what is the difference? :-
The 700MB has been through a standard surfacing process, not too accurate but enough to ensure ample coverage of the surface of the CD - the special coating (the coating which gets 'burned' out by the laser used within the cd-writer) is guaranteed to cover enough of the surface of the cd to support the storage of 700MB... I know I am being a little simple about this but some people don't know!
The 800MB, it is physically identical in size to the 700MB, except the people selling this and announcing 'it supports 800MB' are fairly confident that the machinery THEY use to coat the surface of the disk is a lot more accurate than other run-of-the-mill processes. They are confident that it is capable of squeezing another 4-6mm of coating, a lot closer to the outer edge of the CD.. you encounter problems when you get nearer the outside edge of the CD. 1) The plastic coating they apply to a cd doesn't go on uniformly nearer the edge of the cd, this means the substance that the laser has to shine through is thicker... obvious problem here. The further out towards the edge of the cd that the laser head has to travel, the more chance of the CD hitting it (the cd isn't perfectly 'flat' either, if the CD has been in a warm to hot room and is slightly warped then it 'wobbles', if the cd DOES hit the laser head, then it will undoubtedly damage it.) and of course, if you force your cd-writer to move the head right to the edge of the cd and it attempts to laser holes into material/coating that wasn't designed for it.. well, guess what would happen

 

[wuzza]

so should I only use 800/900 mb cd's that are expensive? at the moment, the ones I got aren't any "name" brand, but they've done the job when i've used them for 700MB or less.

 

[ShinGouki]

I regularly burn 900mb intenso CD's just enable overburn in Nero. They are advertised as 99min CD's i think. You have to manually set the maxium amount of data in the exper settings. The thing you have to make sure of to make it work is that you burn using Disc at once, not track at once.

This makes it more likely you will produce coasters apparently, but ive not had any problems. The only problem you may encounter with burning these CD"s is that some other cd drives dont seem to like reading them. If you are planning on burning these for other people then bear that in mind. They are great for backup copys though.

if what i said doesn't work, post a reply, and ill go look up more specific settings. Although i think i found all this out on intenso's website ages ago.