I was just thinking to myself, i wonder how much money the cd-r manufacturers are making off us guys "i bet it is more than i earn...lol..." the amount of wasted discs due to errors or a new file can be hacked so we just have to try it, then it came to me, why not use cd-rw discs, but i thought to myself surely somebody else would have done this, so then i thought maybe its not possible to make a cd-rw disc bootable, forgive me for being silly, but can you make it bootable????

Yes its bootable. A CD-RW disc is in every way the same as a CD-R, but rewritable

I think most people are using CD-Rs for the unattended testing because of the higher capacity it can hold (700/800MB) so they can squeeze all their extras in.

I must be really out of the loop--there are 800MB CD-Rs nowadays?

Yep, only the newer CD-RW drives support it though.

I've been using an old 4x 730mb CD-RW for my test cd's - until my writer went tits up :/

Thank god for Virtual PC

I've been buying a couple CD-RWs for my unattended/slipstreamed tests.. beware when you get hi-speed CD-RWs that they are compatible with your CD-RW drive. If your CD-RW shows High Speed on the right side, get high speed. If it shows Ultra Speed, get Ultra Speed CD-RWs. Ultra Speed CD-RWs won't work on high speed CD-RW drives.