CD-RW drive locks up

My NEC NR-7800A CD-RW drive writes data to CD-RW and CD-R media with no problems (using click-and-drag with Windows Explorer), and I can view the data through Explorer, but when I try to eject the CD, nothing happens. I've tried the right-click menu Eject command, and I've tried pushing the Eject button on the drive, but the only way to bring it back to life is to reboot. My PC is a Dell Dimension 8100 desktop with a Pentium4 running at 1.5GHz and using Windows ME. Any ideas? Thanks!

 

I used Easy CD Creator 4 from Adaptec to format the CD-RW media, but I don't use it to write data to the media. I seem to remember that I used to be able to just hit the Eject button on the drive after writing data, but now it locks up.

 

If you are formatting the CD or dragging to record in windows explorer or my computer you are not using EZ CD Creator at all – either to format or record. You are using the packet writing program that usually installs with it named DirectCD.

Whenever a formatted RW is in the drive DirectCD is active so it can respond to a drag or paste command. But the table of contents is in RAM until you properly close out the program. If you just ejected the CD you couldn’t read it. So DirectCD protects you by locking out the eject command. There should be a DirectCD icon in your tray that you can use to eject the CD.

Don’t trust anything valuable to you on a formatted RW as your only source. Learn to use the regular software without formatting.

 

Thanks, Slipe. You're right -- I checked and found it was DirectCD that I used to format the CD-RW. But when I insert the CD-RW media and bring up DirectCD, it just displays a notice that "the CD is ready to read or write using the drive letter associated with the device." I didn't see an Eject button to click on. When I pressed the Eject button on the drive, I did see a notice from DirectCD saying "Ejecting disk" so it appears that I can use that method to eject it after I write to it. I'm not sure what you mean by "learn to use the regular software without formatting" -- I thought the CD-RW media had to be formatted before it could be used for click-and-drag with Windows Explorer or other software. Is there some other software I should be using? Thanks!

 

The media does have to be formatted to be used for drag/paste in windows explorer. DirectCD can format either CDR or RW to do that.

Try right clicking on the DirectCD icon in your system tray. There was an eject button in version 2.5 – I haven’t used it since.

EZCD will write to either CDR or RW as well, but if you write to RW you can’t erase individual items. DirectCD can be handy for short term backup of stuff until you accumulate enough to write a session to CDR with EZCD. You can add additional sessions, but each session takes about 15Mb of housekeeping space. Some people also rotate RWs for large daily backups using packet writing.

I would never trust a packet written RW as my only source for something important though. It is easy to lose data.