Do you have to have a special CD-R drive to recognize the newer 80 minute long discs? Or do you just have to upgrade the drivers? I put a disc in and Easy CD Creator thinks it’s a 74 minute, and Windows thinks it’s 648 MB.
Generally you need a drive that supports 80 minute CD’s. They get 80 minute CD’s by writing further out on the CD than is normally done. Most CD-R drives physically cannot move the drive head out far enough to read the CD there (although they are becoming more common).
You can also forget about Easy CD Creator. It simply will not deal with any burns past 650MB. I’m not sure but I believe Goldenhawk will let you do this. Goldenhawk also allows for much greater control over your burns but consequently using the software is more difficult too.
but I’ve witnessed several CD drives in Gateways in my office that won’t read even ANY amount of data, no matter how small, written to an 80-minute disc. I know, I know it makes no sense. But I’ve witnessed it repeatably.
I noticed the same thing. I bought Tomb Raider IV and it wouldn’t play in my BRAND NEW (well, it was last December when I got the game) Gateway DVD drive. I tried it on other drives (on computers not powerful enough to run the game) and it loaded right up.
I called Gateway and they told my my disc was defective. I returned the CD-R and got a new one. It would not run on the Gateway drive. I called Eidos (who made the game) and they told me the drive I had would not read an 80 minute CD-R. I called Gateway and they insisted it was the CD-R.
I guess I’ll just have to get a new CD-R that can handle it.
I’m not sure what version of EZ CD Creator you’re using, but from my experience this is not correct (by “my experience” I mean the CD I burned yesterday- 670 MB). I use Nero at home, EZ CD Creator at the office. Both programs will burn 650+ MB/74+ minute CDs. However, the layout info does not recognize the media and adjust the track layout time/space. In both programs you will see a “[XXX] MB OVER” message (in the case above, 20 MB over) for data CDs or “[XXX] MINUTES OVER” for audio CDs. I’m not sure about hybrids. BE SURE THAT YOU ARE NOT BURNING MORE THAN THE CD WILL ALLOW AS THIS CAN SEVERELY DAMAGE YOUR BURNER. Jeff_42 is right about the fact that your CD Burner has to be able to write that far out- most newer burners do not have a problem with that.
There is really no evidence that you can “SEVERELY DAMAGE YOUR BURNER” by overburning (writing >74 minutes to a CD-R.) I can see why one would think so (“oh no, the laser will go haywire and “burn” the circuitry instead of the disc”) but I have never heard of even a single instance of someone damaging their CD-R drive in such a fashion. The worst that could possibly happen as a result of overburning is that you will make a frisbee.
-Outrider
Outrider: That is true. But why risk it? It is a very slim possibility, but why risk damaging your burner in order to get an extra 5 MB on the disc? Plus many CD ROM drives can’t/won’t recognized the overburned portion and the “quality of media” on the overburned section can be lower than on the rest of the CD. IMHO, overburning is NOT worth the risks, especially with media being as cheap as it is.
Cds are dirty cheap these days, why would anyone want to strecth them that far?
On the issue of a drive not being able to read “larger” disks…
Each CD format has it’s own specification which allows the drive to read certain types of CD’s.
It may be the new 80 minute CDr’s is a new specification.
Another example of this is burned CD’s in general. They have a differetn VTOC (Volume Table of Contents) than a normal CD and some drives (Goldstar comes to mind) simply will not read them at all.