Whats the safest, most reliable way to write data to CD-R?
(2004/04/15) The best approach is the one that leaves you with a 100% readable disc today and a few years down the road. The key ingredients are: Use quality media Saving a few pennies today could result in big headaches later on. Some of the cheap bulk brands are good-quality “unbranded” media from reliable manufacturers, but many have poor construction and will not last. Section (7-4-1) has some thoughts on which are good and which aren’t. Stick to 74-minute or 80-minute discs. 90- and 99-minute discs are not as reliable. Use conventional pre-mastering, not packet writing Packet writing (“drive letter access”) is easy to use but files can be “deleted” even on CD-R media, making them difficult to recover. Sometimes open discs will Go Funny and becomes unreadable. (See section (6-3-2) for a “reality check”.) You want to gather the files and record them all at once, not drag-and-drop them onto the disc as if it were a floppy. Use CD-R, not CD-RW If you don’t want your data to be erased,
