[ale] Question: What does "Fixating" mean for burning cd?

[James Sumners]

The fixation process is the process of closing the disc to any further
writes. The burn process boils down to three steps: 1) writing the
table of contents, 2) writing the data, and 3) leaving the disc open
to further writes or "fixing" the disc so that nothing else can be
written to it.

On 10/27/06, tom <tfreeman at intel.digichem.net> wrote:
> I grabbed the cd images of Fedora Core 6 yesterday, and I'm happily
> burning my physical cd's now. And a question came to mind which I'm not
> quite sure how to google (yet), so I will also ask the collective wisdom
> of this list.
>
> When burning the cd, cdrecord will announce as the last step it is
> "fixating" the disk. What the heck is physically happening during this
> process? The extent of my understanding of the process is that the image
> file is being placed on the cd medium by melting the bit pattern of the
> image into a spiral track on the cd. The image file already contains
> directory information, so what is happening during "fixating"??
-- 
James Sumners
http://james.roomfullofmirrors.com/

"All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts
pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it
is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become
drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted."

Missionaria Protectiva, Text QIV (decto)
CH:D 59