[Vista vs OSX vs Ubuntu] Erasing A RW
EDIT: Ubuntu added to the list too. Results won’t surprise you.
Quite a few of my readers know that I have a Hackint0sh in Quad Boot. I was accidentally in OS X (Leopard) at the right time yesterday. A friend of mine wanted to burn some stuff on a filled RW, I was in OS X at that time and I assumed that considering OS X (Leopard) is so user friendly (according to some of my Mac friends) I will not find any problem in erasing & burning a RW. But it wasn’t so easy after all.
Erasing a RW on OS X:
Consider this as a tip for OS X users.
- Load the RW.
- Open Applications.
- Navigate to Utilities.
- Find Disk Utility & Start it.
- Select the disc from the Left Navigation.
- Right Click & choose Erase.
Screen shot:
Now, let’s see how things are done in Vista. Pretty simple I must say. A single click and that’s it. You’re done. Not only that you don’t need to fire up an application that basically is meant for formatting drives.
Erasing a RW in Vista:
- Load the RW. duh!
- Open My Computer.
- Right Click on the disc & choose ‘Erase this Disc’.
- Sit back & relax.
- Call your girl-friend & ask her if she has any RWs to erase.
Screen shot:
Alternately you can even erase the RW when you are browsing through it in Explorer. You will find a ‘Erase the Disc’ tab at the top. Screen shot:
That was Vista.
Erasing a RW in Ubuntu:
- RW What?
Considering that I was talking about default GUI (to be read as simpler) methods for erasing a RW, Ubuntu is a Terminal based OS, so I decided to try out erasing the RW using the Terminal command given by T below. Here, is what happened:
- Go to Applications.
- Start Terminal.
- Type the command cdrecord dev=/dev/cdrom blank=fast
- And wait.
Oh damn! What is this:
Talk about ease of use :D
I don’t think it’s such a great idea to make erasing disks so easy and readily available. You don’t want random people to be able to do that on an impulse, but then maybe that’s just me.
Oh yeah? Who gave you that little nugget of wisdom, my friend? It’s Disk Utility, a utility that does everything there is to do with disks. Sounds like the textbook description of exactly the sort of task erasing a disk is.
All that said, I’m actually quite surprised that the erasing worked for you in the first place. Mac OS X’s support for optical media of all kinds is spotty at best and completely non-functional at worst.
O rly? Why not? Isn’t erasing a disk one of the most basic tasks? AFAIK, even school kids need that functionality.
Hehe. Nice :D
I never knew it’s so tough *cough cough* to erase RW media in Mac. :P
BTW- Devil Wears Prada is a nice movie. :)
@Aayush: I knew you would be here :D The point is that RWs are meant to be erased and re-used so therefore if you have a RW you need to have quick access to erase it for re-writing on it.
As far as Disk Utility goes, we both know why it is mostly used. Personal experience, used a record 40+ times to format HFS+ drive. Erasing a disk sure, but, RWs aren’t the sort of media that go into text book description of “Disk Management”
@Rajbir: It seriously is a nice movie, I had to give it to a friend. :)
Support for burning discs and erasing discs is not at all upto mark. So for someone who relies a lot on optical media, getting Toast titanium is a must.
I for one have stopped using discs cause of the amount of waste that is generated (just threw out a hundred CDs the other day). I think Apple has also started to move away from optical media. Hopefully the next OS is going to be available on the iTunes store or something…
Also, one thing I’ve learnt the hard way. Never trust a RW. Never ever. Even if you have the data backed up somewhere. Cause they somehow manage to screw you in the rear end. Better to get a large flash drive and live a happy life.
@ Milind- Not just RW media but any media! I’ve already been screwed many times but I guess I still haven’t learnt a lesson.
Always backup your important data on atleast 3 medias! Well you might think I am crazy or something but that’s what I’ve learnt (well a li’l bit).
Like they say in Punjabi- Kach diyan churiyan(Kaanch ki churiyan (Hindi)/Glass bangles).
They may break at any moment.
@Manan- What theme are you using in Vista?
Ubuntu Added to the comparison
Goobi: I use RWs for exactly that purpose. I need optical media to view movies on my “Home Theater” & also listen to music in my car. Writing a normal disc for each movie or a album – Too much bio-waste.
@Rajbir: Will let you know as soon as I find out. Been long since I fiddled with the themes, so don’t know. Will let you know for sure.
Ubuntu:
Go to: Applications > Sound&Video > Brasero Disc Burning, and hit the erase button. That *should* do it.
Again, I don’t really use too much optical media any more. I work off hard-drives, internal and external.
PS. I use Hardy. You might find different applications on different distros.
PPS. You might also be able to do this via the commandline/terminal using cdrdao –blank.
What is the command for left Click? :lol:
For ubuntu:
cdrecord dev=/dev/cdrom blank=fast
or better Hardy comes with Brasero – GUI for cdrecord
Btw one simple question :mrgreen:
try to find md5 checksum(need to check integrity of cds) of any cd or dvd in Mac, Vista and Ubuntu.
In ububtu:
md5sum
now beat that…lolz
Nice blog :).
Just to point out, Open Brasero and go to Tools > Erase.
And let the OS wars begin!
Don’t flame me, please :D
why am i getting XSS alert in “no script” extension on this page ???
The idea behind this was to see the default OS options for erasing a disc. If I were to use Brasero, Arya & Goobi would have pounced on me saying that I should download Toast.
Besides I have edited the post to add my experience of erasing the RW with Ubuntu.
@T: About the error, no idea! The md5, I just wanna write a RW disc man. I don’t wanna get all technical with md5 etc.
@Filled: Nice to see you here. Thank you.
Did you try this command:
cdrdao blank
Check this page-
http://cdrdao.sourceforge.net/drives.html#dt
@Manan
Hardy comes with preinstalled Brasero,
There is no need to download it.
@Aditya
thanks for “cdrdao blank” ,will come handy
@Manan
here are two screenshot, using bot commands, certainly second command is just two words, if u don’t feel like remembering things
But I prefer Brasero :)
http://i269.photobucket.com/albums/jj44/visio159/cdrecord.jpg
http://i269.photobucket.com/albums/jj44/visio159/cdrdao.jpg
What all experiments are you’ll gonna make me do for just erasing a RW?
@T: If Ubuntu has a default Burn CD option, it should have had an erase RW option too. It doesn’t pretty much like OS X which only has the Burn disk option in Finder but no Erase disk.
Windows on the other hand, has it all. Vista FTW!!
My 2 cents worth for those using KDE.
Launch K3B.
Click on Erase rewritable.
Beat That.
oh yea nice try with trying to erase using a DVD ROM :roll:
^^lolz…that was DVD-ROM ? 8O
Manan- just noticed that you have 2 DVD drives-
Try cdrecord dev=/dev/cdrom1 blank=fast instead of cdrecord dev=/dev/cdrom blank=fast and see if it works.
^^most probably it is “cdrom0”
counting starts from zero here.
LoLz I’m surprised no one noticed(except me) he was accessing a DVDROM. The screenshot clearly mentions “SONY DVDROM”
See what I mean, the damn thing can’t even erase a disc in peace. I have to do all the research.
What research? Pop a CD/DVD in the drive- right click, select brasero and use your head from there!
Changing tracks- does anyone here use openSuSE? I’m thinking of using that on my desktop and want an opinion on openSuSE vs. Ubuntu before downloading 4GB+ of an OS
@Aditya I’m an openSUSE user.
@Manan Wow didn’t know Vista had the supernatural ability of erasing RW disks from a DVD ROM. Screenshots of that please?
Manan, again it’s your using a hackint0sh that makes all the difference. On an actual Mac, pretty much the only thing people use Disk Utility for is to deal with optical media. Disk partitioning and formatting is not a very common requirement.
Also, you purposely extended the steps of the Mac OS X version. No Mac user actually ever goes to the Applications folder in the first place. I just type ‘dis’ in Spotlight and hit return to launch Disk Utility.
Both the Mac OS X and Vista versions are pretty much just as useful as the other. I prefer the Mac OS X version because formatting and erasing disks is not placed right in front of you in a right click menu in a place that even the most n00bish people know how to open. The last thing I want is for someone to right click on my pen drive in M y Computer and hit Format, just because it sounded like it would make the drive’s data nicely formatted or something.
Don’t know that which version of Ubuntu are you running my friend.. there are tools called Brasero and K3B available for Linux which are marvellous.. and try to burn an ISO image with the integrated CD-burner in Vista :D
Yes Ubuntu Lacks Many things
– Vista has out of box deafault feature for ISO image creation from cd/dvd
– And yes you can mount ISO images in vista without using any third party application but poor Ubuntu fail to do so.
Some of many reasons why i Love Vista :D
I love it a lot more because I can play mp3s out of the box :D
Add Divx,mkv,Mp4,quick time,mov, real media to the list. Vista can also play All by default.
Get Life Get GNUine Vista :D
If Vista had all that dude, Unix would have been destroyed long back. As a matter of fact, it is good that Windows does not have all that by default, independent developers should have a means of earning and all these features that you have listed allow people like the developers of Daemon Tools to earn a living ;)
And yes Genuine Vista is much better. Dumb users won’t have stupid problems if they use genuine software on their comps.
Oh Yes Buddy Somethings Somewhere Somehow hurts :D
Cool Down.
There is a valid reason for no MP3 support in Ubuntu ( Well know fact to you) but the reason you gave in support of Microsoft is pretty much baseless.
So according to you by bundling IE and WMP microsoft want to destroy competition in respective areas :D :D
[i]>>And yes Genuine Vista is much better. Dumb users won’t have stupid problems if they use genuine software on their comps[/i]
You still believe this crap that original Windows runs better? This means that if I have a CD/DVD of an OS, then copying it to a new one will make it useless and prone of crashes?
If this happens in only Vista, then Vista needs to fix its f**ked design.
eh? What?
Didn’t understand what you are trying to say by:
What I meant was simple. People say that Installing windows from pirated CD’s is the real reason for so many system crashes. If I make a CD clone by burning to a new CD very slowly, then what’s the problem?
Say, if I have an OS named ABC (original of course) and I make a copy of it, and install it should it cause any problems?
People still dont know the real meaning of original windows installation and pirated one. Even if I install Vista from the DVD which you bought, my installed Vista is still pirated.
Dude! Do you even know the difference between a genuine and a pirated version? Do you know what is meant by a genuine version?
Making a copy of the install disk is NOT piracy! Understand the basics of computing. I heard you did internship at Microsoft and you don’t even know this.
It’s sad.
Even a 5thgrade student from a decent English school knows that whether a Windows is genuine or not, does not depend on the install disk but the license you use to activate it.
Yeah! I know about piracy! If I have got a Vista license and make a copy of it for my use, its not piracy.
If I copy Vista from the DVD which you bought after paying thousands of bucks, then its piracy, since I havnt got a license.
BTW. I did an internship in R&D section, not in Marketing and Sales division. I would have simply said NO to the latter if I was offered. I didnt want to be a part of that unethical marketing team.
I did my internship just because no one can say to me “You dont know about Microsoft since you never worked there”. Can anyone say me this now?
[i]>>And yes Genuine Vista is much better. Dumb users won’t have stupid problems if they use genuine software on their comps[/i]
You still believe this crap that original Windows runs better? This means that if I have a CD/DVD of an OS, then copying it to a new one will make it useless and prone of crashes?
If this happens in only Vista, then Vista needs to fix its f**ked design.
Manish, I don’t think you’re really getting what Manan’s trying to say. There is a difference between a genuine software and pirated software. Making an identical copy would mean that the software is genuine. Using that copy when you don’t have a licence for it would mean that the software is being pirated.
Using software that is not genuine does not mean the same thing as using software that is pirated, de jure, although, de facto, it does. Software that is not genuine means the software is fundamentally altered from what what is being sold by the company officially. This usually occurs when the software is slipstreamed and then pirated. In such cases, there are greater chances of the final software being buggy. Just making a one to one copy of a piece of software doesn’t do this, and is not necessarily illegal- again depending on the jurisdiction. There’s nothing wrong with creating backup copies, as long as it adheres to fair use policies.
I did my internship just because no one can say to me “You dont know about Microsoft since you never worked there”. Can anyone say me this now?
My, you’ve got the logic on that down quite nicely. So one can’t say that ‘you don’t know about Microsoft since you never worked there’, because you actually worked there. Very impressive I might add. It isn’t easy to get internships there.
But one can say, with quite a bit of surprise I might add, that ‘you don’t know Microsoft inspite of having worked there’! That’s pretty logical too.
You see, we’re all pretty logical people here. It would be really nice if you’d keep your abusive bits out of this site. Along with ‘Vista’s f**ked design’. We all have our opinions here, we all state them politely.