My Dell Dimension 4550 came with Roxio's Easy CD Creator, which I have upgraded to 5.3.5.10. The E: drive is a HL-DT-ST CD-RW GCE-8400B (there's also D:, LITEON DVD-ROM LTD163, if that affects matters). I'm using Smart & Friendly "Rocket Fuel 80" 8x speed 80 minute CD-Rs. Easy CD Creator is set to format as CDROM (not CDROM XA) and with a Joliet filesystem. I can write small (under 1MB) data discs no problem, but if I try to write large amounts of data (just under 650MB or 700MB) the writing process never ends! The drive light keeps winking on and off long after the program claims to have ended. After a couple of hours, asking for "dir e:" hangs the system. The discs produced hang this and other machines when I try to read them. I think the hardware must be OK, as I can write small data sets as well as 78 minute+ music CDs which play fine. I haven't experimented to see what the upper data size limit is (somewhere between 1 and 645MB, it appears). It doesn't help to first create a CD image and then burn that, rather than recording directly off the hard disk (my disk is rather badly fragmented, but I want to back it up to CD-R before defragmenting it). Has anyone else seen this, and found a workaround? I've burned more coasters than I have need for. Thanks!

I too run Roxio Easy CD Creator Basic 5.3.5.10 under Windows XP SP2 to keep backup data periodically and never got problems. Two things however to pay attention to: Finalize your CD selecting UDF mode as standard ISO may give troubles with XP filenames. Account always for almost 50 extra megabytes to finalize the CD so limiting your data cluster to max 600-650 MB per CD (depending the CD-R is 650 or 700 Mbytes able). Today systems can read UDF CDs without problems and you can stay safe with your backups.

I also use Roxio here, and it works very well on my Plextor burner. I have found the best success with Maxell blank media here, but that was through some experimentation on my part with various media brands. Maybe your problem could be contributed to that inferior media you are using; and I don't want to give the impression that I am making fun of it, as I am not.... but you usually can expect results to be only as good as the (quality) of the media you use. You can't expect superb burns with budget media. Hope this helps a bit. ~Tommyo

I tried UDF as suggested, with no better luck. I also left off a few more files, so I had about 80MB free on a 700 MB (80 minute) disc, but again, no difference. I guess I'll try picking up a pack of Maxells and see if that helps at all. I use the S&Fs on another machine with no problem, I can make small data discs, and I can fill a disc with music with no problem. Maybe this drive is finicky? Are music CDs less worried about dropped bits (or buffer underruns), if that's what's happening, than data CDs? Thanks for trying to help... Phil

OK, I bought some Verbatim CD-Rs (52x) and was able to do my backup without any problems. I did notice that although the requested write speed was 8x, the actual indicated write speed did go as high as 12x. Is there any way to get EasyCD Creator to drive at the speed limit? This may be why my S&F 8x CD-Rs failed. I've got a big box of those 8x CD-Rs and I'd like to be able to use them. Also, I tried both UDF and Joliet formats, and both badly mangled directory and file names that contained blanks, hyphens, dollars, and other such MS goodies. Is there any way to get it to write Windoze-format names, as that's where I'd anticipate restoring these files? For the time being, I just made a file: dir /s >\realNames to list what the names should be, and wrote it to the CD-R. If I ever need to restore these files, I'll have a LOT of renaming to do! By the way, what exactly are 'Joliet' and 'UDF' formats? I think Joliet is some sort of MS extension to ISO9660 and the last I heard of 'UDF' it was a terrorist group in N. Ireland! Phil