Greetings:

Since 2001, I have been using Adaptec's DirectCD v3.01d packet-writing program for convenient drag & drop CD-RW drive letter access with my Hewlett Packard 4X external USB 1.1 CD-RW drive on my Windows 98SE-equipped PC. Unlike some users, I personally have never had any problems with DirectCD.

When I fully format a 650 MB CD-RW disc with DirectCD, I am left with 532 or 533 MB of useable free space.
When I fully format a 700 MB CD-RW disc with DirectCD, I am left with 570 MB of useable free space.
On my HP 4X CD-RW drive, the full DirectCD formatting takes an average of 45 minutes to complete. Yes, I know it's slow, but I'm patient and I do other things during the formatting.


I am now considering the purchase of a newer CD-RW drive that is Mount Rainier-compliant.

Mt. Rainier, as hopefully some of you know, is a fairly new standard that makes it easier to use CD-RW or DVD+RW discs. The discs can be used as floppy discs, much like DirectCD allows. On Mt. Rainier CD-RW and DVD+RW drives:
- you can drag & drop files to the CD-RW or DVD+RW disc
- a blank disc will be initialized and is available for drag & drop very quickly
- the real formatting of the disc is done in the background, invisible to the user
- If there are scratches, etc. on the disc, the drive will recognize this and will replace the bad areas.

More Mt. Rainier info at: http://www.licensing.philips.com/informati...cuments102.html and http://www.licensing.philips.com/information/mtr/ew/ and http://www.mt-rainier.org


For those who currently use a Mt. Rainier-compliant CD-RW drive, I'd like to know:

1) After a 650 MB CD-RW disc is fully formatted to the Mt. Rainier standard, how much useable free space is left (in MB)?

2) After a 700 MB CD-RW disc is fully formatted to the Mt. Rainier standard, how much useable free space is left (in MB)?

3)With my current DirectCD-formatted CD-RW discs, I discovered that I am permitted a maximum of 128 characters (including the file extension/type) for the name of each saved file. For Mt. Rainier-standardized CD-RW discs, what is the maximum number of characters allowed for the name of each saved file?


Thank you for your reply.

532 or 533 MB.



570 MB.



128 characters AFAIK.

Well, the only advantage Mount Rainer brings is the very short formatting time and the advanced error management.
However, formatting DVD media will not result in losing space (like with CD media). Anyway, I think this applies to UDF, too.

You cannot pre-format a Ranier disk (last time I checked). This is what I didn't like about it then (but it wouldn't bother me now). Mares' figures are incorrect...you can knock off another 50 MB or so in ultimate capacity. Since Ranier is relatively new, the reader for it is written on every disk. Ranier is a UDF format...just with more error correction/protection. I have a Yamaha F1 external which supports it.

xen-uno

I tried using Mt-Rainer (MRW) with InCD v4.xx, and the results were disappointing. I don't think it is true that the formatting time is less, but it only formats the amount of space that you need to use, so you don't have to spend up to 30mins formatting a disc to use it.

Again the results are varied - I have had discs end up with errors and refuse to complete recording, other times they refuse to be displayed properly on other computers. I also have had InCD freeze (BSOD) on Windows 2000 more with the previous version but I think it still happened with v4. So all in all it is still a rather unstable and problematic system. If you can get it working well then stick to it.

The problem that I see is that Mt-Rainer is a good extention to the UDF(CD-RW) format but just because the original method of waiting 30-60mins to format a CD turned so many people off the technology and then to have all the problems of compatibility - I found most people just burned the info to a CD in 10mins that had no compatibility problems.

I originally used UDF for backup storage but the amount of time to burn the RW & having several CDs go bad on me I decided a removable hard drive was MUCH more efficient

PS - just formated a 700MB in MT-Rainer and got 573MB - still took probably 15-20mins at 12x

Why are my figures incorrect?

I have formatted a 650 MB and a 703 MB CD-RW to the Mount Rainer format using DirectCD on Windows 2000. The formatting took about 20 - 30 seconds (both discs) and the 650 MB disc had 535 MB left while the 703 MB disc had 575 MB left. DirectCD can also format to UDF 1.5 or UDF 1.02 (not exactly sure which one) and that took about 3 minutes for the 703 MB disc and 2.5 minutes for the 650 MB disc. I have used a LITE-ON LTR-52246S writer (52x / 24x / 52x) and Ultra Speed 24x media (650 MB Verbatim / 703 MB TDK).

Anyway, I did not test how much characters you can use for the file names. Beside that, everything I said was 100% correct (at least according to my tests)!

I think your figures are correct - i got the same when I formatted the disc with InCD.

I'd actually be intereted in how much you get when formatting a DVD, I was trying to evaluate different storage media, and one criteria is actual data capacity, ie on HDs buying a 120GB HD when formatted will give you about 111GB actual storage (9 GB shaved for formatting - remember when the whole HD was 10 GB?!)
Anyways I don't have a DVD burner but from what I've heard that the 4.7GB disc is in fact only 4.2GB usable - now does that apply to DVD-RW as well or does formatting to UDF shave it down again?
Has anyone tried this and how long would it take to write the whole CD?
Thanks

According to the German Magazine c't, formatting DVD media to UDF (or Mount Rainer) will not cause in any additional loss of space. A formatted 4.7 GB DVD-RW should therefore have about 4.7 GB free.

The problem with the HDDs is the following: manufacturers use 1000 KB = 1 MB, while Windows uses 1024 KB = 1 MB.

I guess I stand corrected...but when I first got the Yamaha F1 drive a couple years ago and did some Ranier'ing with Nero then...formatted capacity (by filling an RW up) was less than a straight UDF format disk...and I can't explain why (details forgotten). I no longer use RW's as floppies (pre-formatted)...I just write them as single/multi session disks with the UDF/ISO long format using RecordNowMax.

xen-uno