Found my first annoyance with Vista

Why do you HAVE to format a blank disc when writing to it?

Why can I format a 4.5 GB DVD in 2 minutes, but a 700MB CD-R takes 20 minutes?

And why does it only format 582MB of a 700MB CD-R?

That's annoying as hell.
I suppose it could be a hardware issue, is anyone else experiencing this?

 

I also experienced the same thing once. When I wanted to burn a MP3 disc vista tried to format the cd-r disc everytime I tried to copy the files. Then I used media player to burn the files. But the disc got screwed up and only 560 MB was left out of 700 MB.

You can try restarting your notebook and then try again. I don't why vista sometimes formats a disc when i is supposed to write.

 

When you format a disk there has to be information left on the disk saying it's formatted and stuff, but i don't think it should take up 200mb. Maybe it's a vista bug.

 

That's why i never use Windows to write cd/dvds. Use Roxio, Nero or NTI.

 

My brop uses Nero, but my cousin uses something else i can't remember. But my bro said nero was awesome so i'll have to go with Live on that one.

 

"Formatting" CD's and DVD's like that is a side-effect of Windows allowing you to set up multiple sessions for CD's, so you can write to a disc multiple times. I find it's a pain in the rear. How to turn it off though, I don't know. I don't burn CD's (or DVD's) under Windows, as k3b is the best burning program out there, bar none.

 

Why do you recommend k3b Pitabread? What's so good about it?

 

I was a roxio fan since the 90's... downloaded the new Nero program the other night and it blows roxio away. The new Nero is oh-so smooth... every program works as it should... the templates for the dvd builder are awesome... I can't say enough about how nero finally got it right! Burning a CD/DVD in nero is smooth as well... no issues. Many ways to burn a CD/DVD... the two choices I like are the simple screen (to burn something fast) and the advanced screen for people who want more control over the burning process... nice...

Roxio been going downhill since 7.5... although, roxio is better than windows. The windows app is mainly for marketing purposes to say that they have something... MS can't put anything too powerful in their OS... see what happened when they included a good browser.

 

Hey jtmat does Nero convert? If it does i'll recommend it to my cousin to use because he's been looking for a new program to use to burn dvd's.

 

Nero baby. Although it's starting to turn into bloatware. I miss the old Nero BurningROM

 

For Windows, I recommend the basic Nero stuff, sans wizards. I like k3b because it just makes much more sense to me than any of the other burning programs I find in Windows, and it lets me have a lot more control over how I burn the disc. But that's just because I'm that type of user... k3b isn't perfect for everyone, though. It doesn't have nice wizards to guide you through making a video DVD with menus for instance. But since that isn't what I need, it's nothing I miss. And, being that I use Linux almost exclusively, it's handy that it runs on my system of choice

 

Sans wizards? Why? Aren't wizards supposed to help out?

 

Wizards are, generally, for novice users. It is a guided/step-by-step hand holding process. More experienced users know what needs to be set and where. Just a way of making a program more user friendly for less experienced users.