On Mon, 2 Feb 2004 22:34:55 -0000, "Jon"
wrote::

I bought some 900MB CDR's today. I thought, cool, I'll burn a load of data
on one of those today. Apparently though, my burner can't handle them. Is
there someplace out there that I can find out what burners can handle them
properly?

Thanks, Jon.


Depends on what you mean by "handle" them. The burner can burn them
just fine, as can about 90% of the burners ever made, and ALL of the
ones in current production. The trick is overburning, and the
guestimates I gave in the previous sentence reflect that. Burn the CD
in DAO mode (DAO or DAO96) and click past any warnings that might come
up about exceeding the disc capacity.

The other trick is actually reading the discs back. Sometimes the 90
and 99 minute discs won't even read back on the drive that just
successfully burned it -- but will read on another drive. The Liteons
usually can are pretty successful at reading back these oddball discs.
The drive will make some pretty disturbing noises doing this though,
as there will be some read problems, and the head will have to
reposition itself a few times to do the read.

Because of this, I've pretty much given up on the extended capacity
CDs. At this point, if you want high capacity, go for a DVD drive.
You can pick up a 2x or 4x DVD+/- burner fairly cheaply now (some are
less than $100 Canadian) and the media is dropping in price -- fast.
The lowest price I've encountered for media recently is $1.25 Canadian
for Ritek 4x discs or $1 for the 1x equivalent. Admittedly not the
best discs, but then your 90minute CDs are probably made by them, or
Princo anyways. You'll get higher read compatibility for sure.
----------------------------------------
Thanks,
MCheu