What's a coaster as it relates to CDRW?

[tazdevl]

New to the whole CDRW game and just bought a Plextor 16X. Seen the phrase coaster a lot but I have no idea what it is.

Thanks

 

[Raspewtin]

coaster refers to CDRs more than CDRWs and it refers to a CD messed up during the burning process (more rare nowadays since nearly all drives have burnproof, etc) please anyone correct me if I am wrong. Happy burning!

 

[buddhasghost]

I have enough laying around to sit drinks for a New Years eve party...😛

 

[PliotronX]

Raspewtin, you got it right. Since CDRs use a dye that can only be burned away once, if something goes wrong in supplying the data fast enough to the burner, the CD can't be continued written to (unless your burner has BURNproof, JustLink, or other "absolute position recording" techniques for restarting where the laser left off), thereby rendering the disc uselss, also known as a coaster. CDRWs can simply erase the data and start over again though, so you can't get coasters on CDRWs 🙂

 

[jaywallen]

PliotronX,

Never underestimate the power of Adaptec / ROXIO software -- in other words, DirectCD. I've seen some CD-RWs that were definitely "coasters". Couldn't erase them, couldn't run the ROXIO Scandisk utility on them, couldn't format them. I've never seen a CD-RW coaster that had just been written to as thought it were a CD-R. I think you have to format it UDF and then have a problem while writing to it to produce the coaster phenomenon on a CD-RW.

Regards,
Jim

 

[PliotronX]

Egads, I'm glad I don't use UDF writing. Thanks for the heads up :Q

 

[sak]

Means that u did not burn correctly and or were using the pc when burning and hence made a the cd u were just burning on useless. unless u use it as a coster...

 

[skace]

I think I can sum this one up with an experience:

Back in college my friend had bought a CDR, since no one had one, it was shared between 6 people. It was an older model and we all used it constantly so it was always dying in the middle of burns. So for every 1 CD we would make successfully we would have anywhere from 1-4 'Coasters' or CDs that could only be used for sitting cups on or throwing down the dorm hallway... They also make decent mirrors when grouped in large quantities.