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 
June 23rd, 2008 at 11:40 am
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.
June 23rd, 2008 at 12:00 pm
O rly? Why not? Isn’t erasing a disk one of the most basic tasks? AFAIK, even school kids need that functionality.
June 23rd, 2008 at 12:51 pm
Hehe. Nice
I never knew it’s so tough *cough cough* to erase RW media in Mac.
BTW- Devil Wears Prada is a nice movie.
June 23rd, 2008 at 3:34 pm
@Aayush: I knew you would be here
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.
June 23rd, 2008 at 4:32 pm
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.
June 23rd, 2008 at 4:49 pm
@ 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.
June 23rd, 2008 at 4:50 pm
@Manan- What theme are you using in Vista?
June 23rd, 2008 at 6:17 pm
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.
June 23rd, 2008 at 8:53 pm
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.
June 23rd, 2008 at 10:15 pm
What is the command for left Click?
June 23rd, 2008 at 10:42 pm
For ubuntu:
cdrecord dev=/dev/cdrom blank=fast
or better Hardy comes with Brasero - GUI for cdrecord
Btw one simple question
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
June 24th, 2008 at 1:18 am
Nice blog :).
Just to point out, Open Brasero and go to Tools > Erase.
June 24th, 2008 at 1:51 am
And let the OS wars begin!
Don’t flame me, please
June 24th, 2008 at 4:53 am
why am i getting XSS alert in “no script” extension on this page ???
June 24th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
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.
June 24th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
Did you try this command:
cdrdao blank
June 24th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
Check this page-
http://cdrdao.sourceforge.net/drives.html#dt
June 24th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
@Manan
Hardy comes with preinstalled Brasero,
There is no need to download it.
June 24th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
@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
June 24th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
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!!
June 24th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
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
June 24th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
^^lolz…that was DVD-ROM ?
June 24th, 2008 at 5:55 pm
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.
June 24th, 2008 at 6:16 pm
^^most probably it is “cdrom0″
counting starts from zero here.
June 24th, 2008 at 7:07 pm
LoLz I’m surprised no one noticed(except me) he was accessing a DVDROM. The screenshot clearly mentions “SONY DVDROM”
June 24th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
See what I mean, the damn thing can’t even erase a disc in peace. I have to do all the research.
June 24th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
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
June 24th, 2008 at 7:43 pm
@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?
June 27th, 2008 at 12:56 am
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.
July 4th, 2008 at 1:34 am
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
July 6th, 2008 at 6:20 pm
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
July 6th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
I love it a lot more because I can play mp3s out of the box
July 6th, 2008 at 7:19 pm
Add Divx,mkv,Mp4,quick time,mov, real media to the list. Vista can also play All by default.
Get Life Get GNUine Vista
July 7th, 2008 at 11:13 am
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.
July 15th, 2008 at 12:04 am
Oh Yes Buddy Somethings Somewhere Somehow hurts
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