Losing the thread in a discussion about the difference between "Disc" and "Disk"
And yet so far nobody mentioned the term "Drive", which to me is to distinguish between a Floppy-, Compact-, Digital Video - or Blu-Ray
Disc from a HDD, a Hard Disc
Drive, or SSD, a Solid State
Drive.
(Beancounter prevention: Well, yeah, discs are
part of a drive, resp. discs need drives. But to me that's only a point when I'm going to look at technical details about their function, not when looking at it as a storage medium.)
That's the thing. being "not wrong" is more highly valued among us old farts than being "sensitive".
Every engineer knows: Problems cause problems.
So better solve those damned things in time before it's too late.
The first thing to solve a problem is, to admit there is one. In the end solving problems is most of the times a team play, or better be (That's why there are such things as forums.)
It doesn't matter who pointed it out, or who delivered the final touch to solve it, as long as the damn thing is solved. That all starts with respecting the one who pointed out the problem, and not killing the messenger.
Denial doesn't solve anything.
For having a mature conversation that tries to find the truth or leads to a solution both sides can agree to, sensitivity is required a must have. Without sensitivity there can be no respect. Without respect nobody can admit to be wrong. And if nobody is allowed to admit being wrong, because he cannot trust into treated with respect then, there cannot be neither truth nor compromises both sides can live with.
Being right needs no greatness.
Admitting to be wrong proves greatness. It requires trust. Trust requires the greatness of the one being right to treat the wrong one with the respect he earned for admitting made a mistake. Beating the one admitted being wrong ain't no sign of greatness. In contrary, it's just very low. It's abusing trust, which produces loss of respect.
But being not wrong needs nothing at all, not even communication skills. The denial of communication suffices.
We old farts learned that being right is what counts. Youngsters learn not to be wrong.
You don't have to be right to be not wrong.
You can be not wrong while actually being wrong as long as there is no
accepted proof you're wrong. For example if you just don't admit you're wrong, simply make your opponent to stop on any further discussion e.g. by delivering an unlimited chain of excuses no matter how silly BS they are, or just refuse to accept the proof, no matter how right it is.
That's the heritage of public discussions like TV's talk shows, that it's not about to find out
what is right or wrong, but
who wins an argument.
Winning the crowd is winning the argument - not finding out what's right.
There are other techniques, too. See
Arthur Schopenhauer, "Eristische Dialektik - oder die Kunst, Recht zu behalten" ("The Art of Being Right"; didn't found an english translation, but I'm sure you'll find one.)
And that's all what it's all about:
Winning an argument, doesn't matter what's right or wrong.
Most of the times it's just the opponent gives up, because educated, intelligent people do not fancy stupid talks. "The wiser head gives in." That's why the stupid always win.
And because they are stupid they believe they won because they were the smart ones. That's a punch line they don't get, because they are stupid:
After all their BS won through,
then they conclude it must be because of their points were the better ones, which can only be, because those were right.
This way BS replaces facts.
IMO that's the reason why so many things go wrong today: A lack of communication skills based on a lack of respect.
But
back to topic:
Aminavy,
Since for many years my standard default mobile mass storages are either USB flash drives, microSD cards or SSDs/HDDs attached to eSATA or USB it's been some years I burnt my last CD. And if, I use(d) RW, which shall make no difference in this case, since the burning process is the same. But I actually found a blank CD-R in the rack. Quite dusty *cough*.
Anyway: tested. worx.
So, let us summarize, what we have so far:
My cdrtools are the same version, and as I said on my machine under FreeBSD it works perfectly. So, it's not cdrecord.
On Windows and Linux you get the CDs burnt correctly without problem on the
exact same hardware, right?
For data CDs creating an ISO image first is part of the CD burning process under FreeBSD, so here also could be a small chance something went wrong. But by your posts it's clear to me you read the handbook. And I suppose the ISO image you're trying to burn is also in all cases the same. So I exclude this point. Image is OK.
So, this brings me to, that at the moment I can only think of two possible causes:
1. "You should run several tests in all supported speeds of your drive with the -dummy option turned on if you are using cdrecord on an unknown system. Writing a CD is a
real-time process." [
manpage cdrecord]
As
cracauer@ and
kent_dorfman766 pointed out, for a successful burn of an optical medium there must be enough data flow to get a continuous (real time) writing process, which means both: enough buffer and enough data transfer (fast enough, continuous, not interrupted.) Today's internal SATA drives shall make no prob, but with external USB drives, especially when mixing USB standards (sometimes even just the (extension) wires are crappy (which cannot be the case here, since under Windows and Linux it works)) I've had several issues with some USB drives not working reliably or even not at all at different machines.
You may try to use your USB burner at another USB port. (2.0
3.x)
USB has some tricky pitfalls.
2. If you want to burn less data than fitting on the disc, e.g. when you're using a standard ISO image of 650 MB on an "oversized" disc of 800 or 900 MB, cdrecord warns you, if you really want to waste that space. If this one is not answered/handled correctly cdrecord does not burn at all or maybe even produce garbage when there is some unconsidered "work around". But alas as
mer also asked for, the (error) messages you receive by cdrecord would have helped a lot to get closer.
So, bottom line:
- try another USB port
- try an internal drive
- read and deliver cdrecord's messages for to tell you more/better
- Do you really need CDs? If it's not an unavoidable must (e.g. for some old machine) use some alternative like flashdrives, since apart from music CDs are almost dead anyway. Rather all computers can read and boot from USB flashdrives, and also car's stereo systems and TV sets are capable to play media from those.
an old machine, a couple of drives, FreeBSD, ZFS, NFS & voilá: NAS as a reliable and flexible BU "medium"
