ISO 9660 vs. UDF 1.5 CDRW Formatting

[NewJack]

What are the pros and cons of these formatting standards when using CDRW disks and Drives?
I have the option of using either standard when formatting my CDRW disks and wanted to know if there is an advantage over one or the other (ie speed, compatibility, etc.). You respose would be greatly appreciated.

 

[stevewm]

ISO9660 is the standard format for all CD's, all OS'es will be able to read this format.

UDF is used only on CD-RW discs when you use them with programs like DirectCD and InCD to allow you to use them like a floppy disk. (Also known as Packet Writing)

ISO9660 was not designed to be used like UDF is, if your going to use your CD-RW disc like a big floppy disk (being able to delete/move files to/off it on the fly) use UDF. Remember however that UDF discs will only be readable in OSes with a UDF reader installed (Win2k/XP already have a UDF reader installed, Win9x/ME do not) Due to UDF's design there is alot of filesystem overhead, therefore a 650MB disk after formatting will only have about 550 MB available space.

Unless you really need to update files on the disc often, its best to use Nero or EzCD and burn the disc as a standard Data CD (ISO9660). If you need to update/add something down the road just copy everything off the disc to your HD, quick erase the disc and re-burn.

DirectCD and InCD often tend to be flakey, I don't personally trust packet writting programs. Lost too many discs full of data with DirectCD, it always managed to mess the filesystem on the disc up somehow.

 

[NewJack]

Thanks for the info.
I wanted to use the CDRW disks for my MP3 files, by using UDF format I could easily swap songs as needed. However, I would hate to loose any data as a result of some corruption in the packet writing process. Is data lose a common problem with UDF programs such as NTI 's File CD and Roxio's Direct CD?

 

[stevewm]

I found the more you copy/move/delete files on the disc the more common data loss becomes. DirectCD includes a Scandisk utility that is able to fix some problems on the disc, it saved me a few times but all the problems on the disc where caused by DirectCD itself!

I wouldn't rely on packet writing for data you absolutely don't want to loose.

Unless you really need to update something on the disc often, just burn as a normal data CD, and when you want to update just copy everything off, do a quick erase to the cd-rw disc (EasyCD Creator should have this option, on a 4x burner it takes about 1 minute to erase), and re-burn. Not only will you not loose space to UDF overhead but you also won't have to deal with any of the problems the packet writing programs can cause.

I haven't personally tried FileCD, but if its anything like DirectCD I wouldn't use it.