ADVICE PLEASE!!!

[billniceguy]

My first CD-Rewriter 52x32x52x. It is a liteon brand. I have built thousands of computers, repaired and troubleshot many more, but no cd burner. It says 52x writing, 32x rewriting and 52x reading. Am not sure what i have here. Says recording capacity 650/550 mb for cd-r discs, 650 meg for cd-rw discs.
CD-R...CD-RW...CD-W, etc..what is what? What discs do i buy? What is difference between write and rewrite?
What are different recording modes and different formats?
What is CD-R/RW media? Do i use read only discs?
Can I copy music and movies, or just digital?
NEXT QUESTION...I have p4/2400 with two hard drives, now i want to add this rewriter, and also my dvd player. Should i run them main hard drive on primary master and rewriter as slave and secondary master with second hard drive with dvd as slave...OR...should i leave two hard drives on primary, and dvd and rewriter on secondary...if so, which on should be slave?
Any help will be appreciated...thanks much, Bill

Cd-r means you write once to the cd and thats it


CD-RW these cds can be written on and erased and rewritten on. Just like a floppy

For brands i usually get Memorex, Imation and Fuji. I dont really reccomend those store brands like walmarts.

for cd-rw/cd-r you can put basically anything you want on the cd as long as it fits

i would put the burner and the dvd player on the secondary IDE. it really doesnt matter which you make the master and the slave

[elroy]

52x24x52 = 52x cd-r and 24x cdrw and 52x read
You can use either cd-r or cd-rw discs up to 700mb capacity
Best to put hard drives on primary master and slave.
Then put the cd burner and dvd on the secondary master and slave.

[John Prophet]

cd-r = write once and thats it...once its full its full and you go on to another disk. With disks being so cheap nowadays most peeps just use cd-r's.

cdrw = you can erase it and write again...but they cost more so I dont mess with em. (besides the cd-r's are so cheap now why mess with erasing and re-writing)

Music, movies, data....its all data when it comes down to it. The difference is when you are using something like Nero or Roxio burning software. If you choose to make an "audio" disk...what it will do is record all the songs in the ".cda" format..which is "cd audio" format...just like store bought music cd's....so you can play em in boomboxes and car cd players etc....the downside being you can only fit 70 or 80 minutes of music on a cd.

If you want to make a music cd with mp3's..you just choose to make a "data" cd....that means you can put wayyyyyyyyyyyy more songs on it..BUT...it wont play in boomboxes and home stereos...it will only play in computers or mp3 players.

You can put mp3's or .cda's or whatever on cd-r or cd-rw media so that aspect of it doesnt matter....I personally have maybe used a cdrw once or twice...even then Im not sure if I have or not, lol. I have just always used cd-r media.

Another trick is that nice looking 52x speed....I wouldnt count on it too much....youd have to find 52x media which would probably cost more....and even then it only reaches 52x at certain spots on the cd after it winds up to speed etc.....so to make it easier to use different media and avoid bad burns etc you might want to manually set it to 24x or 32x maybe....even at 24x copying a full cd takes like only 3 minutes or so.

You can put movies on cd-r or cd-rw....that is called a "vcd"..video cd...obviously a dvd is bigger than a cd so to get a movie onto vcd takes 2 or 3 cd's at least.


As far as mixing hard drives and cd or dvd drives on the same cable...there are several ways to look at it...the main issue is that if you have 2 drives on an IDE cable...BOTH drives will run at the speed of the SLOWER drive......so that fancy ata133 hard drive will only run at ata33 if its on the same cable as that cdrw. Just something to consider.

JP

[Gait_Keeper]

very good John prophet
also many home strereo's, CD walkmen, Home DVD players , car Stereo CD players will play MP3 CD's, I've been seeing it a lot lately

My home DVD player plays many formats, VCD, SVCD, Kodack picture CD, CD-R, CD-RW DVD-r/rw, MP3, HDCD,

My Mom's walkman CD plays MP3's She was amazed when I made her a CD with 104 songs on it, for her bus ride NY-GA she afraid of flying

aslo your burning software should have a setting for burn speed, you can set it to a slower burnspeed, less chance of errors 24x is good and fast

[John Prophet]

yeah..mp3s rock....I remember wayyy back in the day...for parties and stuff the in-vogue thing was to put lots of music onto a hifi vcr so that you could let the music play for hrs without having to keep changing cd's etc.

Mp3s make it easier.

[billniceguy]

You guys are fantastic...so much great info. This is the greatest site on the internet, and you professional techies are the cream de la cream. Thanks so very very much for all the info. Bill

[sweeper2]

so your saying that if i have 2 hard drives, one a ide 66 and another ide 133 on the same cable, the new HD will only run at 66 instead of 133?

i have both my cd-rw and my cd-rom on the same cable and i can swear the 52X runs faster then using my older cd-rom, which i think is X14 or something.

[John Prophet]

so your saying that if i have 2 hard drives, one a ide 66 and another ide 133 on the same cable, the new HD will only run at 66 instead of 133?

yes


52x or 14x doesnt matter..its the ata speed that matters.

the 14 x could be even before ata standard..it could be the old "PIO" mode..like pio mode 4.

Otherwise I am under the impression that cdrw and dvds etc are ata33

[sweeper2]

what I meant to say was, if I run my 13 gig hard drive which is an old IDE 66 7200 rpm and buy a new 40 gig hard drive which is an ide 133 7200 rpm, will my new hard drive run only at 66 if on the same cable? This may sound dumb sry...that kinda sucks if you pay extra money for the faster cd-rw and it will only run as fast as my old one, dont have enough sockects on mobo to run 2 seperate cables for cd/rw and cd-rom and then seperate the hard drives also...i'm confused......