CD-RW Burner Question

[Lars]

Ok, this might sound a little stupid but can I simultaneously burn a CD and work on some other stuff on my computer with one of the newer burners? Right now I have a very old 8x burner and when I am burning a CD I can't do anything else or the CD becomes a coaster. If I buy a new burner, what are some important features that it should have (besides speed)?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Bovinicus]

That's what burn-proof technology is there for, it helps prevent coasters being burned due to the CD-RW losing it's stream of information. Of course, if you have a good system you should be able to surf the web and perform some non-instensive tasks without burning a coaster.

 

[xpr8]

It isn't the quality of the burner that bogs your system down, it is your system.

I have a P3 500 with 256 megs of RAM and a 8x and I have no problem browsing the web while I burn a disk. When I had my old Celly 333, I'd have to wait till the burn process was done.

 

[Lars]

Thanks for your information. I will look into a burner with burn-proof then.


By the way, I currently have my 1GHz T-Bird with 512MB RAM. It does not always get me a coaster when I burn and surf but it did it a few times, and since then I am not risking that anymore I do nothing while it is burning the CD.

 

[Derango]

Hmm...odd...I never had a problem doing that on my p3 866mhz...

Does the CD-RW share an IDE channel with any other device?

 

[Mavrick007]

I've seen many reasons that burners can make a coaster. Sometimes the software you're using, the media being burned, the system setup, the quality of the burner, and even just slightly bumping the machine will cause the burner to give a coaster.

With the new fast burners, I don't see any problem with waiting the 4 minutes to get the burn finished. You might want to try testing some burns with a new burner under heavy system load on a cdrw, and then limit the programs being run to see if that matters with the burn process.