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Questions tagged [compact-disc]

Compact Disc or CD is a type of optical physical media that can hold digital data (data, music, video). Standard CDs can hold up to 700MB of data, or 80 minutes of audio if converted to an audio-CD.

515 questions
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Why do CDs and DVDs fill up from the centre outwards?

I recently had to burn a DVD for the first time in ages and I was wondering why CDs and DVDs start in the centre and go towards the edge. Older rotating-disc media like vinyl records started from the edge and went towards the centre so it couldn't…
Burgi
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6 answers

Can I write (200 MB - 150 min) music to a (700 MB - 80 min) CD?

I have mp3 songs of audio quality 320 kbps. The total size of the songs is around 200 MBs with a total playing time of around 150 minutes. Can I write these songs to an audio CD, whose specs are following: 52x top recording speed on a CD-R/RW…
skm
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84
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10 answers

How to destroy a CD/DVD rom safely?

I have old CDs/DVDs which have some backups, these backups have some work and personal files. I always had problems when I needed to physically destroy them to make sure no one will reuse them. Breaking them is dangerous, pieces could fly fast and…
user165733
76
votes
5 answers

Why can't we write over a CD/DVD after it's been burned/finalized?

I was wondering why CD/DVD burners can't just overwrite a CD or DVD after it's been finalized and set to read-only mode. I understand that read-only mode prevents further writes, but can't a burner just ignore that and burn over the original data…
Luke
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58
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6 answers

Do most music CDs contain the needed info about their tracks?

I see that many audio players (I mean multimedia software like Winamp or Foobar2000) have the ability of searching music information on databases like CDDB. Shouldn't such info already be available on the music CD itself? And is it there? Some…
user162573
50
votes
7 answers

Open source / freeware application for Windows 7 to create ISO images

I'm looking for a freely available utility I can run on Windows 7 to create CD/DVD ISO images from actual CDs and DVDs. Any suggestions?
Nick Kavadias
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50
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1 answer

Does full erase create all 0s or all 1s on the CD-RW?

Disclaimer: there was this question, it was deleted before I managed to post an answer. Since I put effort in creating my answer and I don't want it to go down the drain, I re-post the question here. Original question: I am searching the Net but…
Kamil Maciorowski
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41
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4 answers

What is the purpose of this 4 pin cable with 3 wires that came with an old IDE DVD-ROM drive?

Stumbled on this cable today, it has 4 pins, of which only three are actually in use. It was found with a quick installation guide of an old DVD-ROM IDE drive and nothing else except some screws, so I'm not even sure it actually belongs to this. My…
mxt3
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37
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8 answers

Will there ever be faster CD and DVD discs and writers?

I was thinking about the fact that in the last years I have never seen CDs and DVDs supporting writing/reading speeds higher than 52X and 16X, respectively. Is this a commercial choice (i.e. manufacturers don't care about optical discs anymore and…
user1301428
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What prevents a CD-R from being rewritten?

I know it's kind of a dead / dying technology, but I was wondering what stops a CD-R from being rewritten like a CD-RW. Is it some sort of firmware on the disc, essentially in place to make people buy more CDs? Or is there a more technical reason,…
sam
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29
votes
7 answers

Why is desktop.ini "Ready to Be Written to the Disc" of any CD or DVD inserted under Windows 7?

I have a netbook with an external CD/DVD burner running Windows 7 Starter. Whenever I put any CD or DVD (doesn't have to be blank) in the drive and navigate to its path in Windows Explorer, it tells me under "Files Currently on the Disc": Files…
hippietrail
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26
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4 answers

Is it safe to use a regular marker (Sharpie, etc.) to write on a CD-R disc?

In the past I've used a special CD-R marker to write on CD-R's. But I'm wondering if it's OK to just use a regular felt-tip marker (Sharpie, etc.). (Obviously, a pen that you have to use pressure with (ballpoint, etc.) would NOT be safe.)
Clay Nichols
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26
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6 answers

How can I copy a DVD to another DVD using a single DVD drive?

I need to copy a DVD to another DVD, but I have only a single DVD drive. How can I accomplish this? I tried copying files to the desktop and then to another DVD. It didn't work out.
user23413
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25
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3 answers

Can I burn a CD ISO to DVD?

So can I burn an CD ISO to DVD? We've just got a bunch of DVD-R's lying around and I don't want to bother with torrents to download the new Fedora DVD.
Peter Turner
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22
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5 answers

Rip CD/DVD with ffmpeg

Is this possible with ffmpeg? Do you have any links that explain how to do this? I have searched with Google but had not many results. I just want to be able to convert a CD or DVD to MP3 audio files.
alexandertr
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