Recording Your Own CD-ROMs

For about as long as there have been CD-ROMs, there have been CD-ROM recorders you could buy and attach to your computer--if you were independently wealthy and had nothing better to do than invest in a piece of equipment that could never possibly pay for itself.

Back in the old days (say six or seven years ago), these recorders could set you back $10,000 or more. And because there were no clear-cut standards yet, recording a disc that someone else could actually use was iffy at best.

As with most electronics technologies, though, the cost started coming down after the initial glamour wore off. When prices hit the $2,500 range, smaller businesses started to take notice, as well as some hard-core computer hobbyists. But spending as much for one peripheral as you did for your entire computer system was still out of the question for most people.

Today, I’m happy to say, the cost of these recorders--now called CD-recordable, or simply CD-R, drives--has come down to a somewhat affordable level. Consumer-grade CD-R drives from some leading manufacturers can now be had for somewhere in the $500-to-$600 range. For many people that’s still a lot of money, but for many others it may be well worth the investment.

Why would you possibly want to record your own CD-ROMs? Actually, I can think of a number of reasons.

Let’s say, for example, that you operate a business that relies on very detailed and accurate records that must be retained for an extended time. The legal and accounting fields come to mind, but there are many others.

CD-ROMs are by their very nature durable and the information contained on them permanent. Once you record something to a disc, it’s there forever (or at least until you scratch the CD-ROM beyond repair or burn it in your fireplace). Nobody can sneak in later and change a figure or alter an image. What’s done is done.

That leads me to another advantage of CD-R. Because each disc can hold about 650 megabytes of information, it’s an ideal medium for storing both data and scanned images. Instead of having to dig through box after box of paper records to find the receipt or contract you need, you can scan your paper records into your computer and archive them on CD-R discs.

Providing you have the right software, you can index and catalog those records too. This means you’ll be able to find exactly the document you want and view it on your computer screen in a matter of seconds.

If you make regular tape backups of your important computer files, I commend you. But here’s something to think about: It’s not all that difficult for these tapes to become corrupted after you’ve made your backup. For example, a brief pass near any magnetic field could ruin the whole thing. Imagine your disappointment if you tried to reload a critical backup, only to discover that the tape was blank. CD-R discs are much more impervious to damage than any tape could ever hope to be. Because CD-R is not a magnetic medium, you don’t have to worry about any interference from magnetic fields. The discs are also much more heat-tolerant than tapes. Finally, it’s possible for tapes to break or become tangled in the drive mechanism.

Another possible use: If you can’t be somewhere in person, you may want to send a self-running, computer-based presentation to your prospective clients or business associates. In the past, this meant sending off a floppy diskette. Floppies are OK, I suppose, but you’re limited to a little more than 1 MB of information, including the player program that runs the presentation.

With CD-R, you can go hog wild with multimedia on your self-running presentations. You’ll have plenty of room to include a personal video greeting from your company president, an animation of an operating piece of equipment, background music and much more. On the home front, you could use this same idea to create a multimedia family album. Try fitting all that on a floppy.

A caveat: Although you can use a CD-R drive to copy CD-ROM-based programs and music CDs, unless you own the copyright or have permission to copy from the owner (which you probably won’t get), you may be violating copyright law and be subject to payment of damages and other remedies.

As I mentioned earlier, some major firms manufacture CD-R drives. A few of the more popular drives include the Sony Spressa CDU928E, which lists for $499; the Yamaha CDR400t, which lists for $625; and the Hewlett-Packard SureStore CD-Writer 6020I, which lists for $555. Several other companies also produce CD-R drives, so it’s probably worth your time to shop around.

The great thing about virtually all of the CD-R drives on the market is that they can do double duty as your regular CD-ROM drive. That means that instead of going to all the trouble of adding yet another peripheral to your already bloated system, you can simply replace your current CD-ROM drive with a new CD-R drive; drive models are available in both internal and external configurations.

Some of these drives can even do triple duty, also serving as a CD-rewriteable drive. Similar to CD-R, CD-rewriteable is a new technology that allows you to add, modify and delete information on special rewriteable discs. (You don’t need the psychic hotline to predict that CD piracy will be rising.)

There’s one thing I want to make perfectly clear, though. Don’t expect to run home, plug in your CD-R drive and start copying away just like you would to a floppy disk or Zip cartridge--the technology hasn’t come quite that far yet. Your CD-R drive will come with special application software to use for creating discs. Once you’ve mastered that, permanent, reliable storage will be at your fingertips.

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Kim Komando is a TV host, syndicated talk radio host, author and online entrepreneur. You can visit Kim on the Internet at https://www.komando.com or e-mail her at [email protected]