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Are you copying from an audio or from a data CD, and can
you burn just one file or burn just one
audio track from
an MP3 or even a WAV file, to both the CD-R and CD-RW? Is the problem
just from copying whole Audio CDs? Can you copy a Data CD on CD-RW,
or just some data files from the hard drive? Try burning a file or
two instead of copying a CD.
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Could it be that your software is older and refuses to copy an audio CD
to a CD-RW because a CD-RW would be incompatible with a CD audio deck?
Modern CD equipment will read an Audio CD burned on to a CD-RW disk, but
that wasn't always true, so older burning software might not support that.
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How about the fact of size? Are you trying to copy a 700mb CD onto
a 650mb CD? The rule was that a CDR could be 80 minutes/700mb, but
a CD-RW could only be 74min/650mb as standard. Now I have a few 80min
CD-RW disks by Smart Buy that work well.
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Maybe your source CD is corrupt or has some kind of code or copy protection?
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Are the Disks cheap "no brand"? Maybe try another brand.
On the
other hand, a friend of mine told me he had a cheap burner that would ONLY
burn to cheap no-name CDRs not to "quality" CDRs like TDK.
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If you can't burn to a DISK, you might borrow / trade a different brand
of disk with some friends, but if you can't write to any CD-RW,
I might suspect part of the CD burner has gone bad. Burners use a
different laser / different frequency for CDRs vs CDRWs, so depending
on the design, one laser could be bad or if one of the related chips that
does calibration. This would not be my first conclusion.
Whenever I burn to CD-RWs --
even data -- the software warns me that the CD-RW might only be
readable in a CD burner device. In other words, not a good choice
for making a generic "restore" CD for widespread use. That limitation
has definitely been proven to be true especially for older CD-ROM drives.
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Maybe your CD-RW contains data, is not blank. You can add tracks
or add data to a *non-closed session* CD-R (normally the session is closed
at the end of a burn, but that is an optional setting). You can import
and existing session and add a new session if the disk is not closed, and
there is still sufficient free space.
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You cannot overwrite
a CD-RW until you pick Erase from the menu commands.
NOTE:
When checking the used space on a multi-session CD, the number is usually
reported wrong by Windows, though the CD Burner software will report it
correctly. Windows might show something like 90mb used, 100mb free, if
the second session was 90mb and the first was around 500mb.
Note: while nothing will
prevent you from adding a 2nd session to an Audio CD with a closed 1st
session [assuming the space is available], the 2nd session will not be
playable or recognized in all or most CD players. If you need to add more
tracks later, set the burning options to "Leave the CD Audio Session open.
It won't be playable at all until it's closed, however.
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One other possible solution, try to copy the CD
to your HDD first as an ISO
image, then create the CD-R from the ISO image.
Using Adaptec software, it's under File, Create Image.
The "image" you're creating needs to be in the pane showing the data that
will be put on the CD.
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Then burn your new CD using the Create
CD from Image function under the File menu.
That should work for Audio CD as well as Data.
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I had a CD I could not copy due to a bad file on the source. It looked
like it was there and Windows could open the file, but the disk could not
be copied until I first created and ISO image and then the CD from that.
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All these if-but-except-when conditions sound
confusing but they're really not. Once you think about all the factors,
it's really common sense. Each burn = a session. Closing
that session is optional. The session could be left open (unfinished),
or closed. An open session cannot read except by the CD burner, because
it's unfinished. Burning a CD fills up as you go -- deleting files
in subsequent sessions removes them but not the space they occupied.
Even on a CD-RW, erasing the CD is normally required, but see next item.
If the special, newer UDF format is used, the CD is formatted like a floppy
disk for use in Windows. That is called DirectCD or IN-CD or some other
brand name. (It is based on the DVD format.) It will act like another
hard drive in Windows Explorer, you can drag files to it. A
CD-RW formatted in the UDF fashion can actually recover space from
deleted files on the fly. The universal adaptability of such
a CD for use in other equipment such as CD-ROMs is limited. A special
driver may be needed to read that on another computer.
The standard or method for burning an Audio CD is different from the way
a a Data CD is burned, but the media is all the same. There
are "made for Audio" CDRs vs.
"made
for Computer Data" CDRs, but
according to TDK's WebSite, that "Audio" standard is not about "quality"
of media, but the fact that some standalone dedicated CD disk copier devices
need a special code on the disk in order to recognize the blank media as
valid.
Data CDs contain sector after sector of discrete data files burned
in a single track. Audio CDs contain multiple "tracks" of audio sound in
a standardized digital format. Note that the actual audio is embedded
between
the track markers.
I discovered
I could seem to "view" a list of audio tracks on a CD in Windows Explorer
(AudioTrack01, AudioTrack02, etc.) and I could even do a manual copy-and-paste
operation on them, to my hard drive, but the result was tiny 1kb files
containing nothing that I could see.
I know now that each file really contains (or 'represents') a "pointer"
identifying the CD sector location of the beginning and end of that track
of audio information on the CD. There is no value to having that
file on the hard drive.
That's why CD Extraction software is needed to extract the embedded
audio data to (huge) WAV files. WAV files are like raw audio in a
data format. MP3 files are created by doing an algorithmic compression
process on and existing WAV file or "on the fly" on WAV data being extracted.
It's
best to put your original in the CDburner and copy to your Hard Drive (with
sufficient free space) as a "holding tank" first for two reasons.
(To
do this, if you use the "Copy CD" software make the Source and the Destination
devices both your CDburner. When it's done extracting, it should
eject the CD and ask you to put in the destination media.)
One,
the CDburner will extract audio better. People report clicks and
pops when they use a regular CDrom to extract. I don't have a CDrom
and a CDburner in the same PC. I had clicks and pops when I
was extracting CDs to MP3s using my CDrom, and when I read the tip on Adaptec's
website (or some MP3 tips site) I started using only the CDburner to extract
or copy audio and got better results.
Two,
if there are errors or problems reading the source, if you copy it to the
HDD first, the system can take it's time (not restricted to writing a steady
stream), then burn the information in a steady stream when it's done copying.
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Check out CDex online, they have a lot of Help and Tips there too, some
of it very technical. http://www.cdex.n3.net/
.
CDex got excellent ratings for creating MP3 files, though see my other
document
for information on the Best Ripper.
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There are also mixed-mode CDs that contain audio tracks at the beginning
and maybe Video or Macromedia flash files or some other type of computer-based
stuff at the end. That's a whole nuther matter that I haven't investigated
but I would look online for that if I needed to know.
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to be continued or edited later.....
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