CD burner write speed and cdrecord

[Joel Hammer]

Just for the record,

The Sony 48x CR-R, 24x CR-RW, 48x CD-ROM (CRX215E1) works just fine in
linux, at least with CD-R data and CD-ROM. I used the latest cdrtools
(cdrecord, version 1.8 and mkisofs version 1.12.) It writes a cd (580
mbytes) in about 220 seconds or less with speed set to 40 and reported speed
of 32. 

The StepByStep on burners is pretty complete.

Some observations:

Ahh..  The pain has stopped. It only took two short evenings to get this
working under linux. The scsi stuff is a pain. Knowing how to use modules
is a must. If I hadn't had to install a zip drive last year, another scsi
pretender, I would have been a lot longer doing this. 

Although it took only about an hour or less to get it working in windows,
the Sony supplied software was so GUIish it was awful to use.

The command line cdrecord and mkisofs are a pleasure. The man documents
are intimidating.  They are well covered in:

http://wt.xpilot.org/publications/linux/howtos/cd-writing/html/CD-Writing.html#toc3

And, linux is just more robust. Windows crashed once writing to this
drive. Linux soldiered on burning at x32, even when a rogue "top"
command was using up 95% or more of my cpu time and the mouse was
virtually frozen. 

If you interrupt the program while it is burning, the drive seems to stay
busy. Instead of rebooting, just unplug the power cord to the drive in
the computer.

Joel

On Wed, Dec 04, 2002 at 09:00:03PM -0500, Joel Hammer wrote:
> I am getting set to finally burn some cd's.  I have a 48 speed CD-R
> drive. I have only a vague idea what that means.
> 
> Here is a section of the man cdrecord regarding speed of writing:
> 
> ======man cdrecord on speed========
> speed = # Set the speed factor of the writing process to #. # is an
> integer, representing a multiple of the audio speed. This is about 150
> KB/s for CD-ROM and about 172 KB/s for CD-Audio. If no speed option is
> present, cdrecord will try to get the speed value from the CDR_SPEED
> environment. If your drive has problems with speed=2 or speed=4, you
> should try speed=0.
> =====end man cdrecord on speed=======
> 
> I would appreciate and English translation and some suggestions for
> setting the speed parameter. If I understand this this means I can set
> the speed of writing to 48. When I crank up the speed, either to 40 or
> 50, cdrecord says it is writing at speed = 32.
> 
> Does the type of disk (mfg or type) influence the top writing speed?
> 
> I have an 800megahertz Athlon processor.
> 
> Any insight appreciated,
> 
> Joel
> 
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