Burning CD / DVD's help

I'm having a complete nightmare here :(

I've burned a couple of disks successfully, so I know my drive is working. But I have a billion DVD+RW's, and a few CD-RW's, and I can't seem to write anything on to any of them that have been used before...

I read on the net that you can't erase a DVD+RW, but you can write data over whatever is already on it, but that doesn't seem to be true for me. I can't write on it and I can't erase it. I also have a CD -RW which are you are meant to be able to erase over and over (cause its a -RW not a +RW), but I can't even do anything to that.

I am trying to figure out what is wrong. I've got about 20 disks here that have stuff on that I no longer want, and I want to be able to write over them all. I wonder if maybe I chose to close the disk after I wrote them, or maybe I didn't tick multi-session or something, and if so, would that make even re-writeable disks not writeable anymore?

Thanks.

what software do you use for burning? Nero? Well on Re-writable disks, there is a buffer space kind of thing...its highlighted in nero...simply, if you exceed a limit of usable space...you can not go back and remove the data later....there is maximum limit, which you should not exceed in order to keep using the same CD,DVD....also there are options such as multi-session disk...but i dont think that has anything to do with re-writability....but im sure you are filling up the whole CD or DVD...you cant re-write then...if you use NERO...there is a space bar at the bottom?...it shows a red limit...which is total space finished limit...and a yellow limit...which is the limit for re-write....hope this helps....

Thank you. Yes, that is a huge help. I think most of the things I write will be overflowing to the maximum limit, so that is probably why.

I am still confused about my CD -RW though. All I put on it was MemTest which is only a bit over a megabyte, and yet I can't seem to erase it or write over it.

And yep, I have Nero (legit), which greys out the erase button and if I just try to burn something, it fails and tells me that kind of disk is not usable and I must insert a DVD RW etc.. (which it is).

The only thing I can think is that maybe I chose to finalise the disk, and maybe that stops it from being re-writeable :( Like you said though, that doesn't seem right. Its so annoying :( I can just buy more disks, but I will probably ruin all those too, unless I figure out what I'm doing wrong. I'm looking at that CD-RW now, and it's just got 1.17mb used, and yet I can't overwrite it or add to it or anything :( What a waste. Argh. (It could be because it was a bootable CD).

Have you tried a different tool to erase the disk? I used to always use Alcohol to erase my CDRW and DVRW media.

Try Imgburn mate :) (Its free and done by the same bloke who made DVDDecrypter before it went bye-bye)

Also, are you running AnyDVD? If so, disable it. It can cause all sorts of issues when writing disks sometimes :)

Thanks everyone, it's much appreciated :) That Imgburn seemed to work a charm first time. :) I actually have a few programs besides Nero, and none of them seemed to work. I usually just use a little program called Microburner, but it don't think it can erase disks. I usually use Nero for that, and Nero seems to be refusing to do almost anything at the moment. I'm not sure why.. I've done fresh installs and stuff and it just won't budge. I've had problems with Nero before too.

I would quite like to meet the people responsible for Nero, and punch them all in the ear and make them walk on upturned plugs. The Imgburn bloke out for dinner and wrap him in my big coat and stroke his face lovingly.

Just uninstall Nero and the re-install it again after rebooting. It has worked for me.

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Originally Posted by acrobat

Thank you. Yes, that is a huge help. I think most of the things I write will be overflowing to the maximum limit, so that is probably why.

I am still confused about my CD -RW though. All I put on it was MemTest which is only a bit over a megabyte, and yet I can't seem to erase it or write over it.

And yep, I have Nero (legit), which greys out the erase button and if I just try to burn something, it fails and tells me that kind of disk is not usable and I must insert a DVD RW etc.. (which it is).

The only thing I can think is that maybe I chose to finalise the disk, and maybe that stops it from being re-writeable :( Like you said though, that doesn't seem right. Its so annoying :( I can just buy more disks, but I will probably ruin all those too, unless I figure out what I'm doing wrong. I'm looking at that CD-RW now, and it's just got 1.17mb used, and yet I can't overwrite it or add to it or anything :( What a waste. Argh. (It could be because it was a bootable CD).

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Oh great, then there is a button on this post, that says, thank user, press that kindly :P~ lolzz....Ya i think the bootable CD could be a problem...but im not sure...I use nero all the time, never gave me a problem...why dont you try different versions? do you have nero complete? or the nero version that came bundled with your drive? By nero complete i mean there is another nero version, its kind of like professional and it costs....anyways, try reinstalling nero...

Its Nero 7 Ultra. I tried reinstalling but it didn't seem to help. I'll try it again some other time though, and I'm interested to see if it can write onto disks that Imgburn erases, but Im fed up of it now. I was writing disks all day yesterday. In the meantime though, I managed to burn the stuff I needed, thanks to that Imgburn program.