cd-r and cd-rw

[DonKiddick]

I know that the difference between these two types of media are that the CD-R is a "once only" whereas the CD-RW can be used over-written and used again and again. My problem is this: I take a number of normal resolution digital photos of around 1MB each. When I want to store these on a CD (either -R or -RW) I would normally wish to do this in batches of, say, a hundred. This would therefore take up only 100MB of the 700MB space on the disc. Is there any way that I can add to the photos already on a disc or do I have to start a new disc every time I want to store a new batch of photos? (I know that I can copy the photos from a disc in my CD (D:) drive to a new disc in my CD writer (E:) drive and, before burning the new disc, download the next batch of photos but this seems messy and long winded. Is there a better way?

[SteveSxx]

You can add to a CDR as long as you don't "finalise" it when burning
A CDRW on the other hand is a "write all or nothing" medium - although can be reused

[Aquariel]

Before you start to burn the CD, there should be an option to leave the disc 'open' - this will allow you to record another 'session' and add more photos. Although doing this several times on one disc will mean that you won't get the full 700Mb capacity as each 'session' will use up a small amount of extra space.

You would probably use CD-RWs as a temporary storage until you have enough photos to burn them onto a CD-R in one go.

[Sligachan14]

Have a look at this

http://www.afterdawn.com/software/cdr_software /cdr_applications/ahead_incd.cfm

[Sligachan14]

Should have said that I know some people have problems with InCD however it works just fine on my Windows ME system. I can drag and drop files or folders, delete, rename etc.

[wideboy]

Similar to what Sligachan14 said, there is 'packet writing' with Roxio - it's called Direct CD. I think this is now bundled as part of Windows XP? Personally I preferred the old method of formatting the CDRW first (even though it took a while) and then just used the CDRW in the same way that you would use a floppy. Now you don't need to format (it does it 'on the fly') but you need to wait a while when you eject the disc. I haven't used them for a while now that we have memory sticks for transferring from machine to machine, and I use CDR or DVR for backups.

Personally, I would have a folder on the hard drive and keep adding photos to it until I reach 700MB and then archive to CDR. (Maybe using CDRW as a temporary archive (belt and braces and all that).