Help selecting proper CD-RW media (recording speed)

[Mohamed_E]

I am about to start doing backups, and am completely confused by the variety of media available.

It seems, for one thing, that I need to know the speed of my CD burner. I have a Compaq Presario 3045-US, and do not seem able to find much about the builtin drive specs anywhere.

I would have expected to find that information somewhere in the Control Panel, and am sure that it is there, but I am unable to find it. Extremely frustrating :(

Thanks for any help or even just sympathy!

[bcolflesh]

Spec sheet for your laptop:

h20015.www2.hp.com/en/document.jhtml?reg=&lc=en&plc=&cc=us&prodId=compaqpres307215&docName=c00034322&cat=

It had several CD-RW options. Go to the Device Manager, look under CDROMs and get Properties for your particular device to learn more about it.

You can also try the prog I mentioned in an earlier post today:

hijacker.rpc1.org/discinfo/

[dannyboy]

The Nero InfoTool will tell you your drive speed:
[fileforum.betanews.com...]

For critical backups I recommend you burn using the slowest recording speed, typically 4x. Any speed above that "might" corrupt your CD-RW data.

I've personally always experienced data corruption recording to CD-RWs using any speed above 4x. I'm not saying this will happen to you, but for "backups" I wouldn't risk it. Try recording a CD-RW full of music at maximum speed and see if you get any click/pops/errors on playback. If you do, then you should lower the speed.

I've had good successes with a variety of CD-RW media. I'm currently using HP discs. I found a good deal at Office Max where they had a 25 pack spindle of 700 MB CD-RW 4x-12x speed, for $19.95. This is a decent price considering the second most competative price I found was $23-$25 for Memorex CD-RWs that had a maximum recording speed of 4x.

[Herenvardo]

I found a good deal at Office Max where they had a 25 pack spindle of 700 MB CD-RW 4x-12x speed, for $19.95.

It seems that CDs are cheaper here in Spain than in USA:
Imation CD-RW up to 16x, 25 units w/o box: 15€ (a little more than $15) The same CD, slim case, single unit: 1€
So come here to buy CD's ;)
About your CD-RW, it has been as easy as searching for the model in G (StFW!). here you have your specs: [hardwarecentral.dealtime.com...]
ReWrite Speed: 8x

Greetings,
Herenvardö

[snowman]

I agree with dannyboy - unless you have a defective disk you can never go wrong at minimum or near minimum speed.

[Mohamed_E]

Thanks for the help!

One more question: I will obviously use CD-RW for the differential backups, but what should I use for the initial full backup, R or RW?

[bcolflesh]

R media is so cheap now, I see no reason to use RW except for extended iterative testing.