Running other apps while burning CDs

[krtxmrtz]

I seem to recall someone once mentioned to me the convenience of not running any program while a CD is being burned as this for whatever reason could disturb the burning process and cause it to malfunction. Is it really so or has the situation evolved since the first CD burners were out?

[si_the_geek]

The problem is that you might not get enough data to the CD for it to keep writing - so the burn process usually failed.

In theory it's better now, with memory on the drives there is a backup of however much memory is on the drive before there are problems. Unfortunately as drives get faster at writing, you need to send more data in the same amount of time - so this buffer by itself isn't enough unless you write at a low enough speed, or your processor/source drive(s) can keep up with the rate required.

To help this, so-called "burn proof" technologies have evolved. This means that if the CD-writer isn't getting enough data to keep going it will just pause. For data CD's this is fine - but on music CD's you can hear little clicks (or pauses) where it paused during writing.

[krtxmrtz]

That was quite clear, thanks. Btw I get a message at the beginning in the lines "caching of the files started". Does that have anything to do with this buffering you mention?

[si_the_geek]

Yep, that's it

(although the caching process also includes getting some of the data from the source(s) to the PC's memory beforehand)