Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with cdrom

I have a burning question...

Mael Oui — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 23:37:04 -0800

I'm looking for recommendations for a decent external cd burner for an older computer/OS (Win 2000) and the best stores or online merchants to purchase it. [Barring that, if anyone has any hints for unjamming cd-rom drives that are jammed shut (and, I believe, off the track), I'd be interested!] Somehow my internal cd-rom drive (and only drive with a cd burner) is jammed shut. I've tried the 'paper clip method' to try to get it open, which has worked in the past, but it seems that the tray of the cd burner is partially or completely off the track now. So, it won't budge.

My question (unless you have some ideas of how to unjam REALLY jammed trays) is I'd like to get a new cd burner sooner than later. I'm looking to get an external USB one because I'm not confident about opening up my computer to install an internal. I have an older computer, though. It's about 5 or 6 years old, and I'm running Windows 2000 on it. My current cd burner is an internal Memorex 52MAXX 2452AJ. I really don't care about having a dvd burner; I'm really mostly interested in replacing my cd burner so that I can burn audio cds from files on my computer. I am assuming that dvd burners also burn cds (right??), which is okay, but I have absolutely no use for a dvd burner. So, if it's possible to just get a cd burner (to save a bit of money).. well, that'd be great.

Does anyone have any recommendations for pretty decent, stable external cd burners that would be easy to use for a technophobe and work with an older system like mine? Or, even a company recommendation if not an actual model recommendation? Also, does anyone have any recommendations for online stores from which to buy it? I've looked at Amazon and Newegg, and I generally found browsing their cd/dvd burners to be overwhelming and confusing (especially at Newegg -- and their customer service to be very unhelpful). As I've intimated in many of my past questions, I'm pretty technophobic, so simpler is always better. I'd generally prefer to spend less money.. I'm not really interested in the newest, most bells-and-whistles-y stuff.

Thanks in advance for all responses!

DVD Filesystems

claudius — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 21:53:10 -0800

What would cause certain folders to show up when a DVD is mounted under Windows (XP, FWIW), but not to show up under Linux (Ubuntu Intrepid)? I was given the wonderful New York Times Complete Front Pages as a birthday present, but I can't see all the folders when running in Linux (when it is automounted, or the ripped image is mounted loopback). I'm aware of Rock Ridge and Joliet extensions, but AFAIR, these are for POSIX permissions and Unicode filenames respectively (and are for CDROMS).

What could be going on?

And as an addendum, how are .idx and .pdx files (indices, I presume) handled by Acrobat?

Extracting phantom files from old CDRW

benzenedream — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 12:50:41 -0800

I have a legacy CDRW which shows up empty when mounted in either Linux or Windows. Extracting an iso image under linux via dd yields greppable strings which indicate files are hiding inside. How do I extract the files without knowing what format or filesystem they are in? Mounting the iso as a loop device in Linux yields no listable files. This disc is from ~2000. I assume the final FAT written to the disc is either corrupt or unreadable but files are written earlier on the disc. Is there a "file boundary guesser" that I can pipe the ISO to, which will spit out the possible files?

Help Me Close The Tray From Hell

rossination — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 11:16:23 -0800

Help! The CD drive keeps re-opening! I just got into work and the computer (XP) at our (small) office is having problems. The CD tray is open; when I push the button to close it, it closes, thinks for a second or two, and the re-opens.

Cursory googling has led to me believe this may be a defective drive (it's about 3 years old and this has never happened before). But is there anything I can do in the short term to keep this thing shut? Access to the actual drive itself is not terribly important, but I don't want to have to open up the case and pull anything out.

Any suggestions for short- or long-term fixes would be greatly appreciated. Right now it's just sticking out like the "cup holder" of mid-90s computer n00b jokes.

WinXP Install CD Won't Boot! What gives?

goingonit — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 11:55:16 -0800

Why will neither my computer nor VMware boot the Windows XP SP2 installation CD I got from my university? So I run Linux, but I have a Windows Virtual Machine set up with VMware for times when I just can't avoid using Windows (and, um, Civ 2). My VM just got accidentally erased. So I got a new Windows XP install CD from my university, and got all set to reinstall WinXP....but it doesn't boot. Through either VMware or through my hardware itself. All of the files are on the CD, as far as I can tell.

VMware will boot a Knoppix CD, so it's not the drive's fault. It's also not this CD in particular, since the guy at the help desk booted it when I got it. I even tried copying the whole CD to an ISO image (with dd, so it preserved the boot sector too) but that didn't work either.

Why is this happening? What can I do to install Windows XP onto this VM?

Computer refuses to let us erase the hard drive

billtron — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 20:34:49 -0800

How can I wipe a hard drive if I can't boot from CD and there is no floppy drive? We want to install winXP on a machine with Ubuntu (eventual dual-boot). My friend's computer is not working. He installed ubuntu 6.10, and now it won't boot from CD. We have tried doing things to the grub, to no avail. We can't tell if the cdrom is hda or hdb or hd5hkjhjth. We can provide more details if this ends up being the best way to fix the problem.

There's another post on ask.mf, which explains lots of scary ways of accessing the hard drive through the internet or via a usb. Should we try them? Or should we buy a floppy drive for $5? Or should we take the hard drive out of his computer, put it in mine, and wipe it clean, then put it back and see if the CDrom will be read? We are at wit's end. Please help, ObiWans.

pc to mac cdrom sharing

valkane — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 08:01:02 -0800

How do I mount a Windows 98-burned CDROM in OS X? Old archival CDRs burned on a PC running Windows 98 don't mount on my OS X (10.3.9) iBook. Is there shareware? How can I get my files? Thanks in advance.

disc cleaner

lilboo — Mon, 16 Jan 2006 19:19:59 -0800

Do these disc repair machines really work?

fix my cd rom please?

kev23f — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 16:02:39 -0800

Folks, what on earth is wrong with my dvd/cd drive? If you can fix this i'll shower you with free drink if you ever come to Ireland. I get the following error message when putting most types of disk into my pc's drive; game dvd's, data cd's, music cd's both burned and original: "D:\ is not accessible. Incorrect Function"

However, when i put in a (store bought) film dvd disk it recognises it and plays it perfectly.

The strange thing is that i havent installed anything recently, or modified my system in any way at all, this behaviour just appeared out of the blue this morning.

I've uninstalled and re-installed the drive, flashed the drive with its latest firmare, and pretty much everything listed on this thread, but still nothing.

The system is win xp home SP2, fully up to date. The drive is an NEC DVD-RW ND-1300A. Firmware 1.0B.

How to make an updatable CD-Rom

Pericles — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 08:30:16 -0800

Making an "updatable" CD-Rom (lots of linked, searchable pdfs/ docs) that needs to check the web for updated documents and download them to user's hard-drive, subsequently seamlessly showing data from HD/ CD as necessary. Any resources on coding said beast? Google-fu fails me. I'm envisaging a PC-based solution; perhaps browser-based, downloading .docs/ .pdfs./ .swfs that are on ftp://updates.website.com with a later create date than their corrollaries on the cd.

I'm agnostic as to programming languages.

Help! My CD-ROM device and (apparently) drivers have disappeared

IshmaelGraves — Tue, 23 Nov 2004 20:17:29 -0800

Help! My CD-ROM device and (apparently) drivers have disappeared. Caveat: I'm running Red Hat 9. The /dev/cdrom virtual device is gone. I believe it pointed to /dev/hdb (or possibly /dev/scd0), but I can't mount those either -- mount tells me 'not a block device.' kudzu -p reveals the following:

-

class: OTHER

bus: IDE

detached: 0

device: hdc

driver: ignore

desc: "UJLá74x¡DVL¯CDZ÷ h¡ h¡ h¡ h¡ h¡ h¡"

-

...which I believe might be the drive. But obviously something's gotten majorly fucked up. The only thing I can think of which might have caused this was trying to play a DVD which MPlayer couldn't read. I tried several times and finally the OS crashed and I had to reboot.

This is on a Toshiba Satellite 1130 or 1135 (don't know for sure). I have no idea what kind of chipset the drive is running.

I would try re-installing Red Hat, or upgrading to Fedora, which I've been meaning to do anyway, but I can't burn the necessary CDs.

What do you call the updating process for a CDRom encyclopaedia that updates itself from the web?

Pericles — Fri, 17 Sep 2004 06:25:41 -0800

CDRom encyclopaedia that updates itself from web. What do you call it's updating process? My old version of encarta can check its website to see if here is a more up-to-date version of an entry I'm looking at. If there is one, it downloads it to the hard-drive and always refers to that one when I go to that article again.

I've suggested to my client that he produce a similar cd of medical information which can"magically" update, and want to find a supplier - but don't know how to ask for what I want.

Can you force an iBook G4 to eject when it thinks it doesn't have a DVD drive and there is no pinhole?

inksyndicate — Wed, 21 Jul 2004 19:45:53 -0800

When your iBook G4 loses faith in the idea that it has DVD drive, complaining of an error [-70012] when you stick a DVD in; when even firmware prompt commands like "eject" won't pop it out; when you realize that for purposes of style you have been deprived of a manual-eject pinhole; in such straits, friends, is there any hope of freeing your Digital Versatile Disc of "Spiderman" from the drive?

Indexing old CDs

Stoatfarm — Tue, 11 May 2004 08:52:31 -0800

I have lots and lots of CD-ROMs of old files, scans of old papers I wanted to throw away to save space, etc. I'd like to have an index of them on my hard-drive, and found Offline CD Browser, some freeware that seems to do this. Has anyone used software to index their CDs that they'd like to recommend?

Buy G4 now or wait for G5 Powerbook

adrober — Mon, 22 Dec 2003 16:20:37 -0800

My G3 Powerbook is 3.5 years old. I love my Powerbook and intend to stick with Apple. Unfortunately, my G3 is starting to deteriorate. The CD ROM is broken and programs randomly close for no reason. I lost several pages on a paper I was writing. Which is all to say that my parents generously offered to get me a new computer for Hannukah / graduation (I graduate in a few months). Since I definitely want to buy another Powerbook, should I just go out and buy the Titanium G4? Or do you think a G5 Powerbook will come out soon and I should wait?

Adobe Director technical question.

backOfYourMind — Wed, 10 Dec 2003 05:22:27 -0800

This might be a little too specific, but does anyone know of a method to force a CD drive to spin continuously while running a Director app? [more inside] I often make Director presentations on CD-rom (yes, someone is still doing it!) that need to display mpeg videos. If there is music playing on the CD-rom as well, and the CD drive has 'spun down', the music tends to stutter for a second or two as the drive spins up to retrieve the video.

I've tried a number of (increasingly "creative") methods to keep the drive spinning, but to no avail.

I'm thinking that there must be some kind of VB script or Director Xtra that does this, but I'm having trouble tracking something down.

C'mon Metafilter, gimme some of that sweet, sweet pep