Somebody please shed some lite on my CD-RW problems.

[ddeder]

I have three computers with CD-RW drives. One has a Philips 8x4x12. One has an HP 12x10x32. One has a LiteOn 16x10x40. The Philips and LiteOn machines are using Adaptec software while the LiteOn machine uses Nero. The Adaptec software on the Philips machine is version 3.01 while on the HP system I have version 3.0.3b.

First of all, I was under the impression that once I formatted a CD-RW disc, I would be able to use it like a large floppy on any computer with a CD-RW drive. So I took a CD that had been formatted on the Philips machine with Adaptec DirectCD and tried to use it in my LiteOn machine. It would not work. When I tried to reformat the CD with Nero, it told me it could not unmount the disk and to close any open applications. I rebooted and tried again with the same result.

I then tried my formatted disc in the HP machine figuring since it uses Adaptec software I should have no problem writing to the disc. Wrong. Got an error message. I then started to format the CD with this machine. The format is still going and appears to be working.

Is it just me or will a CD-RW that is formatted with Nero not work with Adaptec and vice versa? Also, is it true that a CD formatted with an earlier version of Adaptec will not work with a later version of Adaptec?

I am doing some more experimenting and will post the error messages that I am getting in a little while.

Thanks for any help you can give me.

 

[bozo1]

<< Is it just me or will a CD-RW that is formatted with Nero not work with Adaptec and vice versa? >>


You got it. Each packet writing software uses its own format and there really is no standard. Adaptec/Roxio uses DirectCD, Nero uses their InCD program. The nice thing with InCD is there is a driver you can install on other machines that will let them read InCD formatted discs without having Nero or InCD installed.

 

[stirling]

That's one reason I don't use udf/packet-writing/formatting.
Another is that it wastes about 100MB of space on the cd.
Try using multisession cdfs instead.
Very little wasted space and readable by any multi-read cdrom drive.

 

[ddeder]

I guess it is understandable that the two applications are incompatible and would require a reformat before being able to write to the CD. The odd thing is, Adaptec was able to reformat a CD originally formatted by Nero whereas Nero was not able to reformat a CD originally formatted by Adaptec. Has anyone else found this to be the case?

After further testing, it appears I was wrong about the one version of Adaptec being incompatible with another version. The last couple of CD's that I have formatted with Adaptec work in both systems.

One more weird thing I found... I had a CD originally formatted in Nero. I stored two files on this CD. I then formatted the CD with Adaptec and stored one file on the CD. The file shows up in Windows Explorer and everything looks fine. When I put this CD back into the system with Nero, the one file does not show up, but the original two that I copied under Nero do show up. When I click on one of these files, I get an error message...