The Last CD/DVD Burning Guide You'll Ever Need

Posted 12/18/2009 at 8:30am | by Mark Edward Soper

14

Comments

Print

Although USB flash drives have become the most popular way to transport project files between systems, you're probably looking for a cheaper way to distribute presentations, music, photo, or video compilations. For these jobs and others, creating a CD or DVD make more sense. However, there's plenty of confusion at home and the office when it comes to what media to choose and how to write your files. Read on to discover our ultimate guide to CD and DVD media, burn strategies, and freeware CD and DVD burning programs.

Burning Methods

Whether you use recordable (R) or rewritable (RW) media, there are two basic ways to create a disc: drag and drop, and mastered.

Benefits and Risks of Drag and Drop (Live File System, UDF)

Drag and drop (also known as Live File System to Windows Vista and Windows 7 users, or as Universal Disk Format - UDF) enables you to copy files to CD or DVD media through Windows Explorer, much as you would copy files to a USB flash drive or other type of drive. Because you don't need to create a list of files in advance, drag and drop is very useful for backing up your files during projects for reuse on the same computer.

However, because of the many versions of the UDF standard in use, you can have versioning problems if you try to move a disc created with drag and drop from one system to another, particularly if the systems do not use the same drag and drop software. In some cases, you might not be able to read a disc on a different system, although you can read and write to it on the host system.

Drag and drop UDF support is built into the CD and DVD writing features included in Windows Vista and Windows 7, but Windows XP uses a strange hybrid of drag and drop and mastering to create CDs.

Benefits and Shortcomings of Mastering

Before drag and drop was common, disc mastering was the only way to build a CD. Mastering requires you to build a list of files you want to copy to a CD (or DVD), making it inconvenient for frequent file backups.

Mastering's strong point, however, is that the media it produces can be read on virtually any device that can read the media used, especially if the media is written in a single session and the disc closed after use. A mastered disc is the best choice when you don't know what type of drive will be used to read the final result, or for distributing a finished audio, video, or data disc to others.

Discs written using the multisession method (in which some files are written, but the disc is not closed, allowing more files to be written later) is a useful midpoint between the ease of drag and drop and the broad compatibility of mastered single-session discs, but this method should not be used to create music CDs for use in CD players that are not designed for MP3 or other computer files.

Choosing the Right CD or DVD Media for the Job

When you shop for CD and DVD media, you'll find a bewildering array of choices. Here's help to cut through the clutter.

CD Media

If you are creating mastered CDs for data or music, use CD-R media. CD-R media is recordable, but not rewritable: burn files to a CD and close it, and they're locked on the media as long as it lasts. If you want to update your disc, use multisession recording, and you can replace older files with newer files of the same name, but you can't ever erase files from the disc.

For drag and drop, especially on the same system, use CD-RW media. Choosing CD-RW media can be tricky because it comes in several speed ranges, including standard (up to 4x), High speed (up to 12x) and Ultra-Speed (up to 24x). If you use the same drag and drop software on more than one computer and want to use CD-RW media to transport files between computers, make sure you use media whose speed is supported by both drives. If you want to reuse a CD-RW disc, you can erase it. However, you cannot erase individual files.

Although you can use CD-RW to store a project in progress, I don't recommend it for permanent storage of completed projects. Thanks to the ever-changing world of UDF standards and glitchy implementations, the odds are fairly good that at least some CD-RW media will be hard or impossible to read in the future, even on the same machine.

CD Media Capacity

CD-R 80 minutes holds 703MB; the older CD-R 74 minutes holds 650MB. CD-RW media capacity depends upon whether it is used in mastered or drag and drop modes.

DVD Media

Thanks to a now long-settled feud between the DVD Forum (developers of DVD-ROM and the DVD-R, DVD-RW, and DVD-RAM formats) and the rival DVD+RW Alliance (developers of DVD+RW and DVD+R media), DVD media is available in a wide range of options for recordable and rewritable media. Thankfully, if you have a Super Multi DVD drive, you can use almost any of these formats, and keep in mind that every rewritable DVD drive is also a rewritable CD drive.

Recordable DVD Media

The first recordable DVD media was DVD-R. It's available in speeds up to 16x, and is often recommended for playback in older DVD-ROM drives and DVD set-top boxes. DVD-R media holds up to 4.7GB.

DVD+R media is available in speeds up to 16x, and provides faster recording of smaller amounts of data than DVD-R. However, DVD+R media isn't as compatible in older DVD-ROM drives and DVD set-top boxes as DVD-R. DVD+R media is also rated at 4.7GB of capacity, but actually holds about 7 million bytes less than DVD-R media.

Dual-Layer Recordable DVD

DVD+R DL was the first dual-layer media, enabling it to be used for creating backups of DVD video movies as well as high-capacity data backup and transport.. It is rated at 8.5GB of capacity, and works well with most recent DVD-ROM and DVD set-top boxes.

DVD-R DL is also available for these purposes. While also rated at 8.5GB of capacity, DVD-R DL actually holds about 4 million bytes less than DVD+R DL media. Because DVD-R DL is a newer format, it is not as widely supported by DVD rewritable drives as DVD+R DL.

Rewritable DVD Media

DVD-RW and DVD+RW are both rewritable formats. However, DVD+RW supports faster recording, easier editing of media contents, and no need to finalize the media before using it on another system.

Although you can use DVD-RW and DVD+RW to make larger backups of projects in process, and this media is less finicky than CD-RW, I don't recommend it for permanent storage of completed projects. Thanks to the ever-changing world of UDF standards and glitchy implementations, the odds are fairly good that at least some rewritable media will be hard to read in the future, even on the same machine.

DVD-RAM

DVD-RAM is often left out of DVD rewritable discussions, but since most recent DVD rewritable drives support it, it's worth a closer look. DVD-RAW supports native drag and drop file copying without the need to use special software, so you don't need to worry about UDF versioning problems. It also supports true random access for easy file editing and erasure and hardware-based media defect management. DVD-RAM has a capacity of 4.26GB.

If your systems support DVD-RAM, it's the easiest way to transport files between systems using optical media. However, keep in mind that most DVD-ROM and DVD set-top boxes can't use DVD-RAM, so consider it a data backup and transport solution only.

Recordable and Rewritable Blu-Ray Disc

Recordable Blu-Ray discs are known as BD-R, while rewritable Blu-Ray discs are known as BD-RE. BD-RE discs version 2.0 and higher support UDF (drag and drop) file copying. The ability to record to Blu-Ray media depends not only upon hardware and media support, but burning software compatible with Blu-Ray recording. See the listings for specific programs in our Freeware Recording Roundup for details.

Quick CD/DVD Media Reference

CD-R – data files, music CDs, CD ISO images
CD-RW – personal file and project backups

DVD+R, DVD-R – data files, single-layer video DVDs, completed project backups
DVD+RW, DVD-RW – personal file and project backups

DVD+R DL – dual-layer video DVDs, larger file backups, completed project backups
DVD-R DL – larger file backups, completed project backups

DVD-RAM – hardware defect management, file backups