Format RAW to NTFS??

Are you telling us that you are 8 years behind and don't know how to burn cds? Do you even have a cd drive that can write to them? What Operating System are you using?

Provided you have a CD Burner and Windows XP you can just drag the files to the cd, then on the left column of the window a "write these files to cd" link pops up, if you click that it takes you through a wizard to burn cds.

You do not format disks before you write to them, there are packet writing softwares that may do that in a way, but its not a true format/ntfs file system thing. And I think it would do you good to avoid those 'solutions'.

If you find that XP's built in burning doesn't suit you, you can download CD Burner XP Pro for free.

TS -

I have not said anything about being 8 years behind on anything. I could not trade the financial markets with data that was 8 days old; much less 8 years. As I mentioned, I have several hundred new CDs and no telling how many other CDs that hold much less than the 4.7 Gig which is the size of all of the new CDs I purchased. So, yes I have written to a cd or 2. I am using WIN XP on all four of my computers. I use 2 of the computers for trading the market and other businesses while the other two are used by other family members. The CDs I purchased all have the RAW file system which is not recognized by any of the drives ( as of yet ). If I drag the files to the CD, nothing happens at all because the CDs are not recognized.

The 2 computers I use have 1.2 Terabyte of space on four drives. Each computer also has 2 CD drives, none of which will read the CDs. I also have 20 to 30 flash drives that have anywhere from 32 meg to 5 gig of space in each one. The flash drives use the FAT file system. I converted a couple of the CD drives to the DLA format system but they would not recognize those discs either.

I have four or five CD burning software packages but have found that NERO Startsmart is the best in my opinion. That just made me think. NERO has a program called InCD that can read and write to any type of file system. I will use it to write to the CDs. Thanks for bringing up that subject. Now I will go and see if, indeed, it will work as I believe it will.

AMC

The problem here is that CDs don't work like other types of media, they have a ISO 9660 or Joliet file system for cds and Universal Data Format (UDF) for DVDs. There is no such thing as NTFS, FAT, FAT32, ect for CDs and DVDs.

Writable CDs range in size from 650MB to 900MB in size, with 700MB being far more common than the others. Single Layer DVDs are 4.7GB, with dual layer being 8.5GB.

Typically when a cd is written to it is done in "sessions" when you burn a cd with most software if you plan on writing more data to it in the future you need to choose 'multisession' and do not 'finalize' but you will need to close the 'session'. If you don't close the session it won't be readable in other drives.

What Nero's InCD (and Roxio's DirectCD) does is allows the disk to be written to similar to a floppy, but these are ugly adaptations to the limitations of CD-R and DVDR disks.

How were you writing to the 650s? There is absolutely no difference in the process if have CD-Rs. If you have blank DVDs now, then you will not be able to write to them without a DVD burner.

What you will need to do if you want it to behave like a floppy is use InCD and make sure you close the session if you plan on reading the disk in a computer that doesn't use InCD (or at least thats how it works with DirectCD). These are really terrible solutions though and if you can just accept a different way of dealing with the media you will be better off and more compatable with other computers.

Have a read of this - http://peripherals.about.com/od/computertermglossary/g/whatisacd.htm

And this - http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html

echo on:
it sounds like you have dvd's and are trying to put them in a cd-rom drive
max cd-rom disc size is 900mb
max dvd is single layer 4.7gb big diff
I have never had to format a disc as of yet,cept floppys of course
maybe the software is now doing it behind the scenes??
like iso or udf
my home theater dvd burner does say it will format disc??? wonder what format that is

amcutler,
All CD/DVD media will say RAW formatted before you burn them. It means that the disc is blank, nothing has been written to the disc yet.

And if your discs are 4.7 GB, then they are DVD's, which you need a DVD burner for. If you don't already have one and decide to buy one, they are incredibly easy to install. Just swap it out with the existing cdrom drive/burner, but make sure that the master/slave jumper is set the same as the drive you are taking out. Or you can add the burner as a second drive if you have room and connections for it. They are pretty much plug and play, and it should work with your existing software.

I don't know if you're using them for backing up, but if you are, it is much more efficient to back up to a secondary hard disk.

Hey Tedster,

I also use a second hard disk for backup and other stuff. But I also back up information on dvds just in case. With my luck, it is good to have both (G).

I hope you are doing OK and are safe. Or at least as safe as can be over there. Good luck and hope you are home soon ........

AMC

I have just been re-reading and i think i sussed your problem out.
You didnt buy blank cd's you bought blank dvd's.

Cd's are never as big as 4.7gig but dvd's are.

Dvd's will not work in either a cd burner or a cd player at all!!!