[ale] Using IDE CDRW Drives

[Chris Ricker]

On Sun, 14 Nov 1999, jfondow wrote:

> I have the an Acer CDR-W working great with xcdroast, but how do you get
> the RW functionality?  I have CDR-W disks but haven't been able to use
> them only the cdr's.  TIA

That depends.  You can use the cd-r/w as an erasable cd-r (meaning you burn
an ISO to it just like you would to a cd-r, but can erase it and use
it again later).  See

cdrecord blank=help 

for all the options on how to erase the discs / tracks / etc.  You might
have to do a blank on your CD-R/W disc before you use it the very first time
as well, depending on what state they arrived in from the manufacturer....

You can't, however, use the CD-R/W like you can under Windows where you
write to it file by file.  Linux doesn't support packet writing in the
official kernels.

If you have packet-written CD-R/W discs kicking around that you need to
read, they're in UDF format.  There are fairly stable patches floating
around which allow you to read UDF (and it merged into 2.3 a while ago, so 
when 2.4 hits it'll be standard).

later,
chris

-- 
Chris Ricker                                               kaboom at gatech.edu
                                              chris.ricker at genetics.utah.edu