You probably want to have a look at Andy McFadden's CD-Recordable FAQ, which is not Linux oriented, but does have a lot of information about the hardware. It is at http://www.fadden.com/cdrfaq/
timothy> 1. I read (on NetExpress) that the shelf life of CD-R media timothy> is only like 5 years. Is this true? Doesn't this suck? And timothy> that CD-RW media has a shelf life of 30 years. Does this timothy> mean I have to get a CD-RW? I think its the other way around CD-R lasts ~25 years, CD-RW ~5 years. But I really don't remember where I read that. Aha. At the end of the FAQ there is the claim that CD-R have an unrecorded shelf life of 5-10 years, and that once recorded the estimated life is 75-100 years depending on whether you are using "green" or "gold" blanks. My impression is that most CD writers you can buy now will write both type of CD. timothy> 2. What is the deal with the buffer underflow thing? I read timothy> (on Computers.com) that you should have a fast SCSI timothy> interface, because if you cant feed the writer data fast timothy> enough, the write will die. - Does this mean that all IDE timothy> CD-Writers are useless? And what if you do get a SCSI timothy> Writer, but are using an IDE hard disk? Wont you still be timothy> stuck? According to the FAQ above IDE writers are not much of a problem so long as the writer has a reasonable size of buffer. And I suppose it depends how you are going to use it. If you always make an image on a spare partition before writing to the CD, problems are even less likely. And you probably don't want to start writing while your machine is heavily loaded with other processes. I have an IDE CD writer (an HP CD-Writer+, 7200 series, 768K buffer) that has worked without problems for me. But I don't use it heavily. -- Gilbert Laycock email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Maths and Computer Science, http://www.mcs.le.ac.uk/~glaycock Leicester University phone: (+44) 116 252 3902