Cant use dvd rw device as general storage device

[hambone]

I recently bought a dvd rw drive and am stunned that I apparently can't use it as a general purpose storage device. Instead I apparently need to use special purpose applications to do file writes. Is this true? And if so, can anyone tell me why Windows XP does not suppport cd/dvd read/write devices as general storage devices? Why is it that we can do typical file operations on a flash device (thumb drive) etc, that we can't do the same operations (write) on an optical device. It seems like all that is needed is a device driver that provides the functionality required by the upper level file driver.

[InTheWayBoy]

Well the trick to burners is that they work as a CD without any extra software. To use the burning aspect of the drive, you need special software to perfom those functions. Since there are several ways/formats to burn CD's, you need a robust application to handle the dirty works. The built-in CDR support of WinXP is laughable at best...I only ever use it in dire situations. Nero is the best commercial application, but there is a large selection of freeware burning tools.

And DVD's in particular are special, since there isn't a universal standard yet.

[hambone]

But isn't "burning" just another word for writing...And if an application can write(burn) to the disk, why couldn't a device driver...after all, a device driver is just software. I guess the question is whether the drive itself can detect the media type and then provide a mechanism for the driver to interrogate it. If that is possible, then a robust device driver that fits in the appropriate driver stack should be no problem.

[InTheWayBoy]

Well you've touched on the reason you can't just burn/write with the built in driver. To maintain compatibility all optical devices use a generic driver supplied by M$. It allows you to use any drive in windows in it's most basic form...a reader. To use the more advanced features you need software that knows how to run the device as a writer.

If every new CD needed a driver to operate that would be bad...you wouldn't be able to use the drive until you load the special driver for it. But, since most drivers come on a CD, how would you access it? See the Catch 22?

Besides, having it this way means you only need to have one piece of software to work a drive. The driver is always the same, and the application usually supports all drives...if it doesn't, there are updates for the software that enable them.

[hambone]

Thanks for the response...I still don't understand why I can download an application like CDuke3 and without any configuration, it recognizes that I have put a DVD +RW disk in my drive and proceeds to write to it, no problem. Is it talking directly to the drive firmware? If not, is it talking to the driver? Is it doing writes through the driver? If so, the file driver should be able to do so as well and provide full access to the drive.

Also, does the driver sits on top of some protocol ala SCSI or IDE. I know that SCSI provides a nice abstract interface to the device. I suspect IDE does the same.

I wrote a couple of NT device drivers a few years ago on top of a protocol called SBP - much like SCSI - but for 1394/firewire devices. I have been out of the biz for a few years so I am ignorant of what's out there today but this situation baffles me viz what I think I know about devices and device drivers...of course a little knowledge can be dangerous!

[InTheWayBoy]

I don't know how they talk, but when you use a burning application, it seems to go straight to the drive. Since I have zero programming knowledge, I don't know the technical terms, but I would like to think all burners have basic commands they follow, like write, erase, etc. And the burning software uses the same commands. Since upgrading the firmware updates many features (You can even overclock certain models just by using a different firmware update) I would think thats where all the instruction are saved.

I know in linux you used to have to use a SCSI emulator to use an IDE CDRW...the software only had support for SCSI. I don't know if that's because people didn't want to switch over, or if it was because the basic commands are based on SCSI language/syntax.

I wouldn't be suprized if Vista includes more advanced built-in burning support. The WinXP actually performs well enough if you just need to drop a few files on a disk, but you can't do anything else with it reliably.