How do I copy a CD-ROM with 3GB of data on it? A huge VideoCD?
You don’t. The CD-ROM doesn’t actually have that much data on it. Some CD publishers use a trick where they reference the same spot on the disc several times with overlapping files. If you try to do a file-by-file copy from the disc onto your hard drive, you’ll end up with several copies of the same blocks, and more data than can fit on a CD-ROM. VideoCDs often appear to have individual files that are 700MB or more. In this case, they really *are* that big. They’re written in a special format (CD-ROM/XA Mode-2 Form-2) that drops error correction in favor of more space. This works fine for video data, but is definitely not recommended for ordinary data. If you want to duplicate a CD-ROM, you should use a program meant for the purpose (CloneCD, CDRWIN, etc). Some software is more capable of dealing with complex CDs than others, so if you have a particular kind of CD in mind (such as VideoCD) you should check the capabilities of the software before making a purchase.
You don’t. The CD-ROM doesn’t actually have that much data on it. Some CD publishers use a trick where they reference the same spot on the disc several times with overlapping files. This is common on software installation discs with support for multiple languages. A separate install directory, with a full set of files, is created for each language. Any common files, such as installation routines or language-independent code, are written to the disc once and shared by all. If there are ten directories, and each points to a 50K shared file, it will appear that 500K is in use. If you try to do a file-by-file copy from the disc onto your hard drive, you’ll end up with several copies of the same file, and more data than can fit on a CD-ROM. (UNIX users can think of these files as “hard links”.) Support for creating such a disc is uncommon. VideoCDs often appear to have individual files that are 700MB or more. In this case, they really *are* that big.
You don’t. The CD-ROM doesn’t actually have that much data on it. Some CD publishers use a trick where they reference the same spot on the disc several times with overlapping files. If you try to do a file-by-file copy from the disc onto your hard drive, you’ll end up with several copies of the same blocks, and more data than can fit on a CD-ROM. VideoCDs often appear to have individual files that are 700MB or more. In this case, they really *are* that big. They’re written in a special format that drops error correction in favor of more space. This works fine for video data, but is definitely not recommended for ordinary data. If you want to duplicate a CD-ROM, you should use a program meant for the purpose (Roxio’s CD Copier, Golden Hawk’s CDRWIN, etc). Some software is more capable of dealing with complex CDs than others, so if you have a particular kind of CD in mind (such as VideoCD) you should check the capabilities of the software before making a purchase.
