Burn DVD that's compatible with CD-Drive

This is just a generic question for anyone who might be able to help me. About a year go or so I received some programs recorded or burned into a DVD disk from Microsoft because our company suscribed to them. I thought it was a regular CD because it was working fine in my CD-ROM drive. However, when I checked the size of the programs stored in that compact disk, I found that it was 4.7GB or near that. It's more than 700MB for just a regular CD. Then I thought this must be a DVD disk that Microsoft has stored its programs or data to. However, my question is how do that burned data DVD and make it readable in regular CD-ROM drive? Has anyone done this before? I would like to know.

Thank you,

ljCharlie

Are you 100% sure that the drive you read it on is in fact a CD-Rom drive and not a DVD-Rom drive?

As far as I'm aware, CD-Rom drives are technically incapable of reading DVD discs, which is why both types of drive are available still for the PC

Many thanks for your response. I'm asbsolutely sure that my drive is a CD-RW drive and not a DVD drive. I would say the same as you have done but I'm still puzzled by why is Microsoft's CD contains more than 700MB of data and still readable in my cd-rw drive.

Okay, here's the thing. When I put the MSDN Windows 2000 Version CD from Microsoft into my CD drive, the Total Size column showed 468MB which is reasonable. But if I click on the CD drive icon and open up so I can see all the files and folders in that CD, then select all the files and folders and right click my mouse and choose Properties, on the Size on disk it will show 1.14GB(1,232,166,912 bytes). How is this possible?

ljCharlie

What happens when you right click on the CD icon and select properties? What size does it report there?

Compressed folders?

There was a video game that came out a while ago called Nocturne that was over a Gig in size but was held on one CD. Compression is the only logical thing. I have seen this on more then one occassion

I'm not sure if it is compressed or not. I was able to access those folders and files. In fact, I was able to install from those files or copy to another cd and run it just fine. So if it is compressed then I should not be able to run the application without uncompressred, right?

ljCharlie

Well, the CD may have a hidden autorun that fires up the software to be able to read the compressed data seamlessly - if it's from Micro$oft, this wouldn't surprise me.

What did happen when you bruoght up the drive properties? What total file size did it say there?

The size is 450MB. However, I don't think it's the autorun file. I was able to copy those individual folders and paste it into another folder in my hard drive and run it from there. This CD has Windows 2000 Pro/Server/Advance Server. Every folder of these OS work just fine even when copying to another folder or burned into a CD.

ljCharlie

right, but copying the data, just dragging it in Explorer, is gonna copy the decompressed files, not the compressed image on the CD.

If you're doing the properties from the HD to see the size of all files on disk, and not the properties on all files actually on the CD, then you are going to get a higher "size on disk" than actual file size because of the way the FAT is structured.

If you've got 4KB allocations for files, then a 1 byte size file is going to be using 4KB on disk.

If you've got 1,000 1 byte size files, then that's going to be using 4Meg of space (even though actual data is less than 1KB).

So, this could be why you're receiving errors. The file allocation sizes on CD-Roms are usually much smaller than on a hard drive. So these 1,000 1 byte size files in my example above may only take up a Meg on a CD-Rom, as opposed to 4Meg on a hard drive.

Thanks!

ljCharlie

I'm starting to think this is not compression.

My new Norah Jones "Feels Like Home" CD (not as good as I hoped) is reported by Mac OS X.2 as 1.2GB. This is a CD Extra format disc: part CD-DA (digital audio) and part ISO 9660 format (data). I suspect the IFPI copy control protection uses a broken table of contents (most CD copy protection is based on intentional errors). The end result of a CD to CD copy should be the burner complaining about a lack of space or, roughly speaking, bottoming out.

Microsoft was one of the first companies to employ copy protection mechanisms (based on intentional errors) to hamper disc duplication (Office 97). In fact, that was the first disc I encountered with this problem.

Since this invention of intentional errors, the hardware/software producers and copy protection companies have been in an arms race: copy protection companies creating new errors and the hardware/software companies designing products to compensate. Unfortunately, its the consumers who loose - copy protection discs can break drives, may not work in some players (or worse, break some players) and violates our fair use rights.

So, maybe you have a copy protected disc. Don't be surprised if some burners can copy it, while others cannot.

On a very different note, there was a very interesting CD-RW drive I saw that on certain types of media could burn up to 1.4Gb on a single CD-ROM. It worked in roughly the same manner as a DVD burner by burning the data tracks smaller than a normal CD-RW. Can't remember the brand name at the moment. Of course that sort of burning is way out of the Book standards for CD drives so you have to question the compatability. This is more a point of interest rather than actually a solution as I would highly doubt MS would have done something like this and I agree with rjmthezonenet on copy protections.

Here is an url for an article on the Drive mentioned:
http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/News/Details.asp?RelatedID=2351

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I also post this question on another forum and people do seemed to think that it is a form of copy protection. You are right. However, I don't think that this will deter people because people can still copy those individual folders and files to a hard drive then burn into a CD again. In any case, thanks for sharing.

ljCharlie

Sometimes you can copy all the files, but one. And its that single file that a setup program is designed to test for. If it doesn't exist, the setup program is designed to fail. Usually...