8X/ Slower CD-ROMS - Issues with Burned CDs?

[Smack2k]

I read a couple places that older 8X and slower CD-ROM drives have issues reading burned CDs. Is that true? Or is it dependant on how fast / what speed you burn the disc at?

 

[WBST]

I read a couple places that older 8X and slower CD-ROM drives have issues reading burned CDs. Is that true? Or is it dependant on how fast / what speed you burn the disc at?

Strictly speaking it's more a case of the developing CD standards of the time. CD-R and CD-RW discs are often "invisible" to early firmware levels. The same goes for "bootable" CDs to the El Torito specification.

 

[maxtherabbit]

The answer is complicated. Really old drives will generally read CD-R just fine but will completely choke on CD-RW. However, the CD-R media and burn quality needs to be up to par for the older drives to read them. This MAY be improved by reducing the write speed on your burner, but that is entirely contingent upon the efficacy of the write strategy for the selected write speed in the writer's firmware. The short odds play is to buy some genuine Taiyo Yuden blanks (NOT made by CMC) and burn them at an intermediate speed. Around 8-16x usually produces the best results but every recorder is different.

 

[Smack2k]

Thanks, appreciate all the information......maybe I will just put faster drives in my 386 and 486...

 

[Ruud]

Another issue I had with older CD drives was the speed with which the CD was burned. I had two drives that refused to read CDs burned with 4x or faster. Another possible side effect: I have troubles reading one of those 4x burned CDs while the 1x one reads fine.
Even nowadays I burn my CDs and DVDs on 1x and in a PC, not laptop. Exception: emergency cases.

 

[maxtherabbit]

Another issue I had with older CD drives was the speed with which the CD was burned. I had two drives that refused to read CDs burned with 4x or faster. Another possible side effect: I have troubles reading one of those 4x burned CDs while the 1x one reads fine.
Even nowadays I burn my CDs and DVDs on 1x and in a PC, not laptop. Exception: emergency cases.

As I said in my previous post - that is entirely contingent upon the writer's firmware and the blank media itself. The readers don't "know" what speed the disc was burned at, only relevance of burn speed is (hopefully) producing a better quality etch.

 

[GiGaBiTe]

Thanks, appreciate all the information......maybe I will just put faster drives in my 386 and 486...

The ATA bus (IDE) is so slow in 486 and especially 386 machines that faster drives really won't do anything. It wasn't until the early 90s that IDE got DMA transfer modes, before that, everything was handled by the host CPU. Data transfers to and from the disk slowed the whole machine down, and total speed depended mostly on how fast the CPU is.

The only way around this is to use a good SCSI card, which the SCSI controller and the drive are smart enough to move data around without burdening the host CPU.

 

[Ruud]

As I said in my previous post - that is entirely contingent upon the writer's firmware and the blank media itself. The readers don't "know" what speed the disc was burned at, only relevance of burn speed is (hopefully) producing a better quality etch.

For one or another reason a vital piece of information was left out. It should have been "Fifteen years later I have troubles reading one of those 4x burned CDs...". It could mean that the pattern of a 4x (and higher) burned CD is of less quality than that of a 1x burned one. It would explain why that those 4x ones were not read by the older CD drives and are not readable at all after fifteen years. "Are" because I found out yesterday that I cannot read parts of the other one anymore.
Remark: the above criticism is just for that writer I had in those days. In fifteen years time I expect that the hardware has improved. But just to be sure, I still burn at 1x.

 

[maxtherabbit]

For one or another reason a vital piece of information was left out. It should have been "Fifteen years later I have troubles reading one of those 4x burned CDs...". It could mean that the pattern of a 4x (and higher) burned CD is of less quality than that of a 1x burned one. It would explain why that those 4x ones were not read by the older CD drives and are not readable at all after fifteen years. "Are" because I found out yesterday that I cannot read parts of the other one anymore.
Remark: the above criticism is just for that writer I had in those days. In fifteen years time I expect that the hardware has improved. But just to be sure, I still burn at 1x.

Some modern drives actually produce WORSE quality burns at 1x. They often don't have optimized write strategies for such speeds anymore

 

[njroadfan]

8X drives are "new" enough that they were expected to read CD-Rs when new (affordable CD-R drives appeared on the market in 1996). I have drives and players from the early 90s that read CD-Rs no problem. I also have burned media from 1997 that still works fine as well. The reason why many of these old drives struggle with CD-Rs now is likely age. The drive is marginal to the point that it can still read pressed media, but not the less reflective CD-Rs.

Regarding CD-RWs, they were never designed to be read with any CD-ROM drive or player. They are far less reflective and required a drive explicitly designed to read them. These drives are usually labelled "Multiread compatible".