From owner-freebsd-hardware Tue Mar 17 08:44:11 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id IAA20992 for freebsd-hardware-outgoing; Tue, 17 Mar 1998 08:44:11 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from mail3.sirius.com (mail3.sirius.com [205.134.253.133]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id IAA20841 for ; Tue, 17 Mar 1998 08:43:59 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from parag@mail.codegen.com) Received: from [192.168.100.101] (ppp-atmp03--112.sirius.net [207.44.198.112]) by mail3.sirius.com (8.8.7/Sirius-8.8.7-97.08.12) with SMTP id IAA11589; Tue, 17 Mar 1998 08:40:03 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <199803171640.IAA11589@mail3.sirius.com> Subject: Re: CD-R and Scanner recomendations for CD archiving of records? Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 08:41:09 -0800 x-sender: parag@mail.codegen.com x-mailer: Claris Emailer 2.0v3, January 22, 1998 From: Parag Patel To: "Open Systems Networking" , "Gary T. Corcoran" cc: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Sender: owner-freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On 3/17/98 5:27 AM, Open Systems Networking (opsys@mail.webspan.net) said: >I have lost 50% of my CD-R discs during burning sessions because >they were defective. That is pretty high. So I dont think I'll be using >CD-R, maybe something more reliable, like punch cards :) Here's some info from a friend of mine who did some research into CD-Rs. Basically, there are (at least?) three slightly different technologies used for making the blanks - I assume three slightly different chemical/physical layouts. There's no tell which which brand uses what and doubtless they change formulas at the drop of a hat to save some pennies. You can look at the blanks and tell - they're slightly different shades of color. Anyway, my friend went through a bunch of different brands of CD-Rs and had most of the problems you had - the cheap CD-R blanks just aren't reliable. He also found that some CD-R brands just won't work in some CD-R drives. The Sony CD-R drives had no trouble burning anything nor did the Phillips (I think), but he had trouble with most other CD-R drives. However, some brands of CD-R blanks worked reliably in all CD-R drives. These include Sony, TDK, and I seem to remember Verbatim. There may be others. Of the known working brands, I've found the TDKs to be the cheapest and so have stuck with them. The only CD-R I've ever screwed up was my fault - I tried to put an image on it that was too big when experimenting with cdrecord. It warned me but but I just ignored it - if it's just a warning it can't be very important, right? I have also found that some older CD-ROM drives (read-only) will not reliably read CD-R, specifically my old Apple 4X CD-ROM on my Mac. I still haven't upgraded it as I can use the CD-R drive itself to read them when necessary. Newer 4X Apple drives with updated firmware work just fine, so it's basically just my luck to have lemon firmware. -- Parag Patel To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hardware" in the body of the message