Creating CD-Rs for Use on Other Computers

[Billie]

When I installed EMC 10, I created a number of data CD-Rs to be used by students on other computers. Instead of using EMC 10 to create these CD-Rs, I merely used Windows XP "Send To" burning process. When the students attempted to open and use these CD-Rs on other computers, they could not access the files, nor could they burn additional files to the CD-Rs. I can read these CD-Rs on the computer on which they were created, however.

 

If I use EMC 10 Creator Classic to burn to the CD-Rs, leaving them open, will the students be able to use the Windows XP "Send To" burning process to add to these discs? EMC is not installed on the student computers.

 

Billie

[james_hardin]

How does this relate to Roxio???

[lynn98109]

I think there is a basic misunderstanding about what a CD-R or CD-RW is.

 

What it is NOT, is a "great-big floppy-disc" or portable drive (like a Flash drive, aka Pen / Thumb / Keychain / Jump drive).

 

What it is, is a means of creating a CD - not with the pits and lands (optical equivalent of magnetic 0's and 1's) physically pressed into the metal like a commercial disc, but with a laser forming the pits and lands. In the case of R media, it does so by "cooking" a dye; in the case of RW media, it does so by melting and re-crystalizing an aluminum alloy ("erasing" means making the alloy flat again with the heat of the laser).

 

When the disc is "closed to be readable on any computer", the TOC [Table of Contents] is completed. At that point, it is as like a commercially pressed CD as can be done on recordable media. It is as "writable" as a CD you would go out and buy in your neighborhood CD and movie DVD retailer. (Packet-Writing is a bit different, but if you want to keep whatever, it is best avoided.)

 

So, if you aren't closing the CDs you are giving to your students, there is a problem reading them. If you close them, they cannot be written to further. There may also be security issues depending on how the [i assume] school computers are set up.

 

When I was taking a few classes at Seattle Central Community College a few years ago, classes using computers required the students to provide floppys or Zip discs or Flash drives, and then download the info from files on the school computer. When I later got my first Flash drive, I had a brief discussion with someone in the comptuer lab, who told me they were having fewer data recovery problems with Flash drives than Zip discs or floppys. Might this be a possibility?

 

Lynn

[james_hardin]

OP said he was using XP Burn. If so it is a done deal with no options whatsoever and the type of media is irrelevant…

 

That is why I asked why he is asking a question here as Roxio isn't involved with the process.

[lynn98109]

Seemed to me OP was asking if using a different way to burn (EMC 10 rather than WinXP) would get the result desired. And I think the answer is, that's not how optical media works.

 

BTW - have you tried asking Microsoft? I think the language they speak (if they were to answer) is obfuscation, not English

 

Lynn