by Could someone out there enlighten me (a bit) on the
pros/cons of the available optical media/drives? I am not
interested in capacities, prices, etc (that I can surely
find out), but rather on their logical structure, on the
filesystems supported, and on their easy of use.
What I mean is the following: right now, the following
main types are available: CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-RAM (and DVD+RW),
and MO.
On one extreme, we have the CD-R and its write-once media.
CD recording is a bit tricky, because a CD-R disk cannot be
written more than once, and also (probably) because it is
conceptually different from a hard drive: the hard disk has
cylinders, sectors,... while the CD-R has a single spiral
track. It seems one cannot just copy files to a CD-R (even
a multisession one); rather, one has to generate some "image"
in the first place.
Magneto-optical disks seem to be very flexible (their
logical structure is like those of hard-disks, and they
are rewritable) and work fine with Unix systems -- they
can be mounted just like hard drives. So (?) they can be
used with various powerfull filesystems.
This seem to be the other extreme (the good one).
Now, what happens with CD-RW and DVD-RAM ?
Also, if you can spot any (conceptual) errors in my
message, please do let me know!
Thank you (a lot!). And please send me a copy of any
meassage you post on the newsgroup.
Paulo