unable to rewrite rewritable cds

A CD-RW disk does not work the same way a floppy disk or Zip disk would. You will have to use the Disk Utility (in your Applications/Utilities folder) to erase the disk before you can write to it again.

-Doug

Doug,

I have the same problem, and yes, I read that about erasing the disk in Apple Help. But here's my question...when I go to the Disk Utility to erase the CD-RW, the erase button stays "dark" and I can't click on it. Does that mean I can't rewrite my CD-RW, and I'll have to start over with a new one? Should I only burn to a CD-RW through the Disk Utility, so that I can specify that it should be read & write? Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Tara 🙂

I've never tried the Apple software, I use Roxie's package. It provides a utility that will let you burn to a CD as if it were a floppy (just drag-and-drop on the icon). However, as with other programs I have used, you cannot erase individual files: when you erase, you erase the whole CD. Some programs allow you to 'erase'(hide) the file name, but the capacity of the CD is still diminished until you erase the whole disk.

Well, I didn't want to reply without testing it first, and I don't usually use CD-RW disks. Apparently, I haven't used one for so long that mine have gone bad! I can't write anything even once to my blank CD-RWs, I just get errors. These disks could be more than ten years old... So, I'm afraid I can't give you some specific instructions right now. 😟

-Doug

Jenniffer,

You cannot modify files that have been written to a CDRW just like CDR discs. If you modify a file, you will have to save it as a new version(new name) of that file.

You cannot erase individual files from CDRW discs. You can only erase the whole disc. As I said in my previous post, some third party utilities will allow you to 'remove'/hide the file name of individual files, but those files will not be removed until the whole disc is erased.

I am having the same problem. I have files on a CDRW. The disk is not full. I try to drag and drop another file to the disk in the finder or on the desk top and I get a message saying I don't have "Privileges" to alter the contents of the disk. What? I created the files and put them on the disk in the first place. I am the administrator of the machine. I don't get this. This is the purpose of CDRW's. Although I switched to mac a 11 months ago and will never go back, this is an instance where something worked efficiently on PC and not on mac. (Frustrating).

I am having teh same problem here, except I determined that I need to erase the entire contents of my rewritable disc, but can't figure out how to do it in disk utilities on my ibook -- can someone provide instructions on how to erase the complete contents of a CDRW -- and is there some special configurations that need to be in place before the disc is burned initially? thanks

If you clicked burn "disc" instead of burn "session", you can not add anymore data to the disk. To add more data you must burn in "sessions".

Hey Brett,
I have never used disk utility until I came to this discussion. I opened it and perused it. I could see that the files on the disk were under a "session" heading. The burn option is greyed out. I was able to erase the contents of the disk. I added more files to the disk in the finder. when I clicked burn, there was no "session" option. I tried dragging files to the disk in the disk utility but they just snap back. so I don't know how to burn in "sessions". Apple must view CDRW as old school and not care about making the use of them intuative. I guess I will go to memeory stick from now on.

Hi,
I think this is a bug, but thanks to these wonderful boards I have found a way to do it...
If you open Terminal and type in hdiutil burn -erase
it will then bring up a line of dots and erase your cdrw completely, leaving it free for you to put more stuff on
I keep hoping the software updates will find a fix for this

Charley

Sorry, I guess when people talk about burning disc, I generally just assume they are using Toast. The burn in "disc" or "session" is a Toast heading. I very rarely use the Finder or Disc Utility to burn a CD. I would suggest you get a copy of Toast, it has a ton of features the Apple's burn software lacks, and would probably solve most of your CD burning issues.

Thanks Brett, I'll give that a try.

Hi all,

I was reading over this thread hoping to get some insight into my problems with burning cdrw's. The burning seems to go okay, but the verification almost always fails ...leaving me with an unusable disk. And I've had no success at all using high-speed media.

Using the 4X media, I get intermittent success, but mostly failures and can't figure out why the #!%@ thing just doesn't work. Someone suggested using Toast would remedy all these disk burning probs. Could these problems just be Apple's burning software. I use toast (v.4) with much success on my older mac. I can't used that old version on this iBook, so I'd have to get an upgraded version.

I'd appreciate your (anyone's) thoughts, Thanks much.

Gieau