Reason to always finalise disc?..

[6000RPM]

Turns out ImgBurn always finalises disc and there is no option to change this behaviour:

On 12/23/2009 at 9:06 AM, mmalves said:

If you burned it with ImgBurn then the disc was finalised. ImgBurn doesn't create non-finalised discs even if you wanted it to.

What's the reason for it? I wrote 4Gb to 100Gb BD and now it's closed.

[ThaCrip]

I can't say nothing officially (as ill leave the details to the higher-ups around here), but I imagine it's generally better/safer this way to write discs in one shot. in the future if you want to fill a disc wait until you have enough data to do it in one shot.

I think some burning software allows multi-sessions, so you could write say 1GB to a 4.7GB DVD for example and then at a later date add more to it, but I think this wastes some storage space on the disc each session you create vs if you did it in one shot. personally I prefer the write everything you want to in one shot as things are nice and reliable this way and you get max storage space.

but on a side note speaking for myself... I remember briefly in the old days, which was probably my earlier CD burning days, so probably in the 1998-2003 time frame or so, I used to use some software that would allow adding/deleting files to it as you went along, sort of acts like a hard drive on some level. I want to say it was 'packet writing' software (I don't remember the name of the software I used off the top of my head) and, if I recall correctly, I only did it on CD-RW discs even though I think you could use it on CD-R etc, but it made less sense on write-once media. but this just seems like a bad way to write CD/DVD in general as I suspect it's best to write whatever you got to write in one shot and apparently this seems to be more of the norm anyways as I don't recall using that packet writing software much since the standard way (writing a disc in one shot) is better/preferred.

but I think in regards to that packet writing stuff... even with CD-RW, which as you know you can erase/write to many times in general, I think with packet writing, when you add some files and say delete one, it does not actually delete the data it wrote but adjusts the general table-of-contents of the disc (or something to this effect) to just ignore the file you deleted so it appears it's deleted but the written area is still filling up (so if you added say two files at 100MB each, which would take 200MB, and then deleted one with the packet writing software, 200MB would still be used up of the 700MB total space on a CD-RW even though it will only appear you got one 100MB file on it. so everytime you write more data to it with the packet writing software the storage space always decreases). only way to fix that is to basically wipe the CD-RW and start clean again. I have not did this in probably 20+ years now, but I think that's the general idea on how it worked.

but after checking Wikipedia on 'packet writing' it appears I am correct (at least with say CD-R, but I 'think' CD-RW reacts the same)...

Quote

Packet writing allows users to create, modify, and delete files and directories on demand without the need to burn a whole disc. Packet writing technology achieves this by writing data in incremental blocks rather than in a single block.

Deleting files and directories of a CD-R using packet writing technology does not recover the space occupied by these objects but, rather, they are simply marked as being deleted (making them effectively hidden). Similarly, changes to files cause new instances to be created instead of replacing the original files. Because of this, the available space on a non-rewritable medium using packet writing technology will decrease every time its content is modified.

Due to the characteristics of optical rewritable media such as CD-RWs and DVD-RWs, the ability of data sectors to hold their contents diminishes when changing them frequently (since re-crystallized alloy de-crystallizes). To cope with this the packet writing system can remap bad sectors with good sectors as required. These bad sectors cannot be recovered by formatting the media.

Edited June 19, 2022 by ThaCrip

[dbminter]

As far as I know, ImgBurn is a one and done affair.  Meaning, it doesn't support writing multiple sessions.  Tracks, yes, but not sessions; LUK can correct me if I'm wrong.  And, if the disc ImgBurn writes isn't finalized, I doubt it can be read at all.  If you want a giant floppy type of affair, you'll need Windows packet writing.  Even if ImgBurn could write more than 1 image to a disc, I don't see how Windows could differentiate the data between 1 image and another on a disc.  Images are a container file, so all the contents get written to them like a giant "stamp."

 

[6000RPM]

Hmm... But I can "append" multiple times using, for example, CDBurnerXP.

Is there a strong underlying reason why this functionality is missing in ImgBurn?

[dbminter]

Well, I have asked LUK in the past why multiple sessions aren't supported, but I don't think I got an answer. 

 

I do know you can't create images of multi-session DVD Video discs in ImgBurn.  Panasonic DVD video recorders made such discs and the only way to copy those in ImgBurn is using Build mode, adding the VIDEO_TS folder from such a disc into a Project, and writing a new image file.  Discs burned with that new image file could then be copied in the future with ImgBurn's Read mode if desired and they still functioned like a proper DVD Video disc.

[6000RPM]

39 minutes ago, dbminter said:

Well, I have asked LUK in the past why multiple sessions aren't supported, but I don't think I got an answer. 

 

Hmm... @LIGHTNING UK! ?

[dbminter]

In his defense, he may have answered and I've just forgotten.

[6000RPM]

*bump*

@LIGHTNING UK!, have you answered this elsewhere?