Unknown Disc Usage

Electronics Computer Programming Q&A
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haklesup
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Re: Unknown Disc Usage

Post by haklesup »

I've been able to look at open session DVD's. But only on the Burner that wrote the session to that disc.
For most tasks, I don't even launch the burner software. Win XP lets you write most files from Explorer directly. Just drag the files to the D:\ drive (or whatever yours is) and the wizard starts (or right click and choose "burn to disk now"). There may be some limitations for music and ISO files (I haven't tried honestly) but then that's what I use the burner software for. (Actually I rarely burn music as music to a CD, maybe as MP3 but now I usually just use an MP3 player, I haven't played a CD for years.)
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sofaspud
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Re: Unknown Disc Usage

Post by sofaspud »

Note also that I see an important distinction between "read from" and "look at."
Robert Reed
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Re: Unknown Disc Usage

Post by Robert Reed »

Well, a lot of good tips here. I have one other question- I have never burnt more than 200-300 Mbytes on a disc and I now have a file to burn that has about 1+ Gbyte (will require 2 discs). Since the discs hold about 700 Mbyte, when the first disc fills up will it stop and notify me or will it do something weird that I may not like.

Sofaspud
"Then I use the ol' DOS print redirect command* to make
a text file of the contents. "

Not sure about this one. Does that mean you print out a hard copy of the disc's data?
And yes 16 GBYTES (oops)
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haklesup
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Re: Unknown Disc Usage

Post by haklesup »

Since the discs hold about 700 Mbyte, when the first disc fills up will it stop and notify me or will it do something weird that I may not like.
I'm not sure about a single file exceeding the disc capacity but in general the burner software will split the disc and ask for a second when the first one is full when there are a multitude of files. I use Nero and it has a bar across the bottom which is shaded for the contents of the disks WRT the capacity. What I'm really not sure about is what happens when you want to read that split file. Do you need the burner software again? Probably so.

Backup and restore utilities (which are often bundled with the drives and I think windows has one too) are an alternative to burner software but you will always need that utility to read what you put on there regardless of size of file count. Most burner software has backup modes as well.

If you only have a CDRW drive than you have to use the CD-R or CDRW discs but if it is a DVD-R drive, you might as well go out and buy a small pack of blank DVDs and do it onto a single disc. (Though I acknowledge you probably want to use the ones you already have).

A single 1Gb + file is rare except for videos and then it depends on the format and screen resolution. Most of the movies I have in files are AVI or MP4 with 320x240 resolution and rarely exceed 500Mb. These files are already compressed so its pointless to try and compress them again. Best you get is a 10% reduction.

If it's a movie, there are other utilities to split the video into smaller files that are still playable (reel 1, Reel 2) and you can also use ZIP or RAR files which allow you to split the files before burning them and then you can move and copy these portions with plain old win explorer though you can't read them until you reassemble it using the utility you used to split it. Check out WinRAR as an alternative to ZIP. Its very similar in concept and compression ratio.
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sofaspud
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Re: Unknown Disc Usage

Post by sofaspud »

I don't print a hard copy of the disc contents, but doing so would be a simple matter. I use that redirect command to
make a text file. When I need to find a file I can then use just about any text editor/word processor to search the
document for it, and know right where to find it among my backup discs. Yes, you're likely to have ~lots of tildes~ in
the file listings, but it's convenient nonetheless. You can edit out superfluous files with a block delete if necessary.
The command is basically telling the computer to output to a file rather than to the screen and include all the files and
subdirectories on the drive.
From my experience, the burner software will not accept the file if it exceeds the disc capacity. I'd back that one up
on a DVDR or on a flash drive. If I had to have it on a CDR, I'd do as haklesup suggested and look for a third-party zip
compression or file-splitter utility.
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MrAl
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Re: Unknown Disc Usage

Post by MrAl »

sofaspud wrote:I don't print a hard copy of the disc contents, but doing so would be a simple matter. I use that redirect command to
make a text file. When I need to find a file I can then use just about any text editor/word processor to search the
document for it, and know right where to find it among my backup discs. Yes, you're likely to have ~lots of tildes~ in
the file listings, but it's convenient nonetheless. You can edit out superfluous files with a block delete if necessary.
The command is basically telling the computer to output to a file rather than to the screen and include all the files and
subdirectories on the drive.
From my experience, the burner software will not accept the file if it exceeds the disc capacity. I'd back that one up
on a DVDR or on a flash drive. If I had to have it on a CDR, I'd do as haklesup suggested and look for a third-party zip
compression or file-splitter utility.

Hi,


That's been my experience too...a special program is needed to split the file into parts, and then
again to put them back together later.
I just thought i would second this issue because if the burner software does not include something
like this then the disk will fill up and then cause an error and then that disk will no longer be usable.
Some burner software will warn of the problem first though, saying something like:
"The amount of data will not fit on this disk"
and then will simply not record anything. This is how my burner software works for both CD and DVD
recording (Memorex drive).
LEDs vs Bulbs, LEDs are winning.
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sofaspud
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Re: Unknown Disc Usage

Post by sofaspud »

If you were interested in my method of archiving files and making a text file of backup-disc contents, I
just learned of some helpful software. Courtesy of Don Lancaster and his What's New? blog. He says,

-October 24, 2009
I was surprised to find out that there is no direct or
obvious way in Windows to text capture a list of files
or other directory content.
There apparently are several free third party utilities that
make this happen. One is called CopyFilenames.
To use, select one or more directory entries and right
click. New mouse options of Copy Filenames and
control-v then lets you empty the clipboard into any text
accepting ap.

Add another nail to the DOS coffin.
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