Ed Eastman <noone@nowhere.net> wrote:
What I (think I) Know about CDs...
From all I have read, CD drives, CDR drives and CDRW drive all use
different technologys. Most of the incompatibility of newer media is due
to rotational velocity during a burn and color of the dye.
The discs are physically different. Some older CD-ROM drives and CD
players had trouble with CD-RW, because the overall reflectivity is lower.
Some DVD players have trouble with CD-R for similar reasons.
So when I burn a disk for another computer especially when it is for
Win98, I always burn it at the slowest speed I can which is 8x.
If I expect my oldest drive to read it I use my slowest burner, gold
disks and and write mode of disk at once and never multi-sessioned.
Write speed can be important, but the optimal write speed isn't
necessarily slower. The "best" speed depends on your recorder and your
choice of media.
Writing in disc-at-once mode on CD-R media is your best bet for
compatibility. Using packet writing on CD-RW (i.e. treating the disc
like a big floppy) is a recipe for trouble.