formatting dvd's and cd's

speleobat2 · Post by **speleobat2** » Sun Mar 30, 2008 8:14 pm

Is there a fast way of formatting dvds' and cd's? It just took my laptop 17 minutes to format one dvd.

I have finally gotten around to backing up things, but it's taking forever to format the dvd's and cd's. Or is this one of those things you just resign yourself to doing and then go find a good book to read while you wait?

Carol

LesleyB · Post by **LesleyB** » Sun Mar 30, 2008 8:20 pm

Hi Carol

Is there a fast way of formatting dvds' and cd's? It just took my laptop 17 minutes to format one dvd.

I'm not sure I understand the question here - any DVDs and CDS I've bougth are formatted before you buy them. Floppy disks used to come in either pre-formatted or unformatted versions (at least 15 years ago...) Do you mean you were writing/copying files from your PC to a CD or DVD? In which case it could take a while depending on all sorts of factors: the speed your PC can write to the disks, the capacity of the disks, how much data you were copying, they type of data it was etc....

Best wishes
Lesley

speleobat2 · Post by **speleobat2** » Sun Mar 30, 2008 10:58 pm

Hi Lesley,

The blank dvd's and cd's that I bought aren't formatted. When I put one into the computer, a window comes up advising me that the disk must be formatted and that it might take awhile. This is before I get to the part where I tell it which files I want to back up. I guess they are truely blank.

Probably because I bought them at El Cheapo Office Supply.

Carol

LesleyB · Post by **LesleyB** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 12:03 am

Hi Carol

When I put one into the computer, a window comes up advising me that the disk must be formatted and that it might take awhile.

Interesting, I've not come across that before, so I've no idea how long a format should take!

Best wishes
Lesley

Russell · Post by **Russell** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 12:18 am

Hi Carol

You may just have to resign yourself to sorting out that pile of downloads and filing them away while your PC does its work.
CDs should be quicker to format than DVDs since the data density on a DVD is many times greater.

The moral of the story is avoid El Cheapo Inc wherever possible as the discs may not hold their format, be more easily damaged or lose their index track (the bit that tells the reader where to find the appropriate files)

Worse still is spending a load of time waiting for the PC to finish then finding that your machine still will not recognize the formatting.

Russell

speleobat2 · Post by **speleobat2** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 1:59 am

But it was a good deal...

And the cd's were name brand. Oh well, live and learn!

Carol

Currie · Post by **Currie** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 5:09 am

Hello Carol,

Are you sure they’re not CDRW & DVDRW instead of CDR and DVDR. I’ve never been asked for a format when using a CDR or DVDR, in fact I doubt such an action is possible, but I seem to remember getting many messages like that with CDRW & DVDRW.

I haven’t trusted one of those varmints since six years ago when I copied a whole lot of stuff onto one and two days later there was nothing there. Not only that, they are reputed to have a much lower life expectancy. I wouldn’t use them for backup storage or anything important, in fact I have one of each and don’t even know if they work in my new old computer. They’re nothing but trouble and can be pathetically slow.

Anything name brand in CDR and DVDR usually works okay unless it’s counterfeit but some CD Writers just wont talk to some discs and it’s usually safer to find a brand that works for you and stick to it. Formatting messages for CDR & DVDR, if there is such a thing, must indicate a problem with the Disc, Burner or Software.

The best backup solutions for really important stuff are USB Drive, External Hard Drive and CD/DVD – all three. On my machine the first two are much quicker than the last.

Hope this helps,
Alan

speleobat2 · Post by **speleobat2** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 12:04 pm

Alan,

You're correct. They are CDRW and DVDRW's. I thought that they had to be RW's to be writeable? This isn't something that I have any experience with at all. So far the ones that I used a couple of weeks ago to make copies of some of my pictures are ok. They were all cd-rw's. Unfortunately, the stores that I have available don't have much in the line of employees other than at the check out!

Good thing that I only bought a small box and not the "lifetime" size!

I'll give everything another read next time I go shopping.

Carol

Currie · Post by **Currie** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 1:42 pm

Hello Carol,

I thought they might have been. The CDRs and DVDRs are the ones that, generally speaking, you write stuff onto with your burner in one session and once that’s done you can’t write any more even if it’s not full. That’s why they’re good for music and backups and sharing data with friends etc. (There’s things like multi-session etc. but you probably don’t want things too complicated at the moment.) When you end up with a collection of old backup CDs etc that you no longer want they make handy bird scarers if you hang them up with string, or so I’m told.

The CDRWs and DVDRWs can be written to more than once, in fact very many times, and information can be deleted and files on them can be amended etc. They’re much like a floppy disc in that regard. That’s why they have to be formatted etc. In theory you can have one sitting in the burner and use it like another hard drive. Probably lots of people use them without any problems but my confidence in them was destroyed years ago. There are probably plenty of uses for the ones you have if you can get them to behave.

All the best,
Alan

speleobat2 · Post by **speleobat2** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 2:02 pm

Thanks Alan!

I've been considering an external hard drive or USB drive, but I don't know anything about them either yet.

Software is always a problem. I have Vista Home Premium in this laptop and have yet to figure out what is premium about it. When I tried to do a complete back up of the computer following the instructions under Performance and Maintenance I kept getting a "back up failed due to lack of sufficient space" or something like that message. I finally went through the Help section and found that Vista Home Premium doesn't come with a "Back up Wizard" so too bad for me, I was on my own. Now, home users are usually the people like me who are least likely to know anything about computers and need the "Wizards" the most so why take that feature of all things out of the Home version?!!!

It turns out that if you ignore their "failed" message and just keep putting in blank discs and hitting "try again" the back up continues. At least, I have four dvds with stuff on them! The problem of course is that I don't know if I got it all or not! What a pain! I'm going to format a bunch of discs today and try again. In the meantime, I've got a good book to read...

Carol