Using rewritable optical media with HDDRIVER

[uweseimet]

Hi all,

I'd like to point out a feature of HDDRIVER, which can be useful but may not be obvious: With many optical multimedia drives you can write data not just to DVD-RAM but also to DVD+RW or BD-RE media, in particular with drives that support the Random Writable feature. In order for these devices to be managed by HDDRIVER the "Manage Multimedia Drives" option must be enabled in the "Removable Media/Memory Cards" settings.
HDDRUTIL can format (usually not required) and partition DVD-RAM, DVD+RW and BD-RE media. With TOS or Windows compatible filesystems these media can be used like any other removable media type. Note, though, that the number of write cycles is limited in particular for DVD+RW media, but also for BD-RE media. For DVD-RAM media this is not an issue as they are designed to support a large number of write cycles.
Modern optical multimedia drives are usually SATA drives. These can easily be connected to a Falcon, or to an ST/TT retrofitted with an IDE interface (e.g. The Doubler, MonSTer or Thunder), by using a standard IDE-to-SATA adapter. I have also successfully connected a SATA DVD drive to a TT, using an ACARD AEC-7720U SCSI-to-IDE bridge combined with an IDE-to-SATA adapter.
Note that HDDRIVER and HDDRUTIL do not support creating ISO filesystems. In order to create and access these filesystems you need special software like ExtenDOS Gold.

Take care

Uwe