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Is it safe to use a regular marker (Sharpie, etc.) to write on a CD-R disc?

In the past I've used a special CD-R marker to write on CD-R's. But I'm wondering if it's OK to just use a regular felt-tip marker (Sharpie, etc.). (Obviously, a pen that you have to use pressure with (ballpoint, etc.) would NOT be safe.)

How can I copy a DVD to another DVD using a single DVD drive?

I need to copy a DVD to another DVD, but I have only a single DVD drive.

How can I accomplish this? I tried copying files to the desktop and then to another DVD. It didn't work out.

To finalize or not to finalize disk when burning CD/DVDs

What is the point of finalizing CD/DVDs from user's point of view? First of all does it have any impact on reliability of media or it's just a way to ensure that the content of the disk cannot be changed?

I wonder because I use DVDs to store my system backups.

How to destroy a CD/DVD rom safely?

I have old CDs/DVDs which have some backups, these backups have some work and personal files. I always had problems when I needed to physically destroy them to make sure no one will reuse them.

Breaking them is dangerous, pieces could fly fast and may cause harm. Scratching them badly is what I always do but it takes long time and I managed to read some of the data in the scratched CDs/DVDs.

What's the way to physically destroy a CD/DVD safely?

How does one go about backing up older CD-ROM games from the 90's?

I have a bunch of those point and click adventure games from the 90's (my youth) like Pajama Sam, Putt-Putt and Spy Fox. These CDs are becoming old and scratched. Being that these were such a memorable part of my childhood, I am looking for a way to back them up for my future kids, grandkids, etc. Where can I get started? Is there anything I should know, need to download, etc?

Will there ever be faster CD and DVD discs and writers?

I was thinking about the fact that in the last years I have never seen CDs and DVDs supporting writing/reading speeds higher than 52X and 16X, respectively.

Is this a commercial choice (i.e. manufacturers don't care about optical discs anymore and focus more on flash memories and SSD drives) or a technical limitation (i.e. optical drives cannot support higher writing and reading speeds)?

Is there any computer parts that can be trashed safely (for the environment)?

I have some (non working) computer parts that I want to get rid of.

I'm pretty sure most of computer hardware can't be put in the trash safely but I want to know if some of them can.

(At the moment I have a CD-ROM and a power supply that I want to get rid of)

Why can't we write over a CD/DVD after it's been burned/finalized?

I was wondering why CD/DVD burners can't just overwrite a CD or DVD after it's been finalized and set to read-only mode. I understand that read-only mode prevents further writes, but can't a burner just ignore that and burn over the original data anyway?

I know you wouldn't really be able to store any new data on the disc because it would most likely corrupt everything, but for data-destruction purposes, what's preventing this?

Is there just no software made for this purpose? Does the firmware on CD/DVD burners boards prevent this? Or has nobody had enough interest because discs are easy to destroy anyway?

Do most music CDs contain the needed info about their tracks?

I see that many audio players (I mean multimedia software like Winamp or Foobar2000) have the ability of searching music information on databases like CDDB. Shouldn't such info already be available on the music CD itself? And is it there?

Some players display the CD contents and others do not. Is that info taken from the internet or the CD?

Create Bootable CD from ISO [closed]

I need to create a Bootable CD from a ISO. is there a free software available?

I am using Windows 7

How I do to modify the contents of a ISO file?

I want to open a ISO file, add files and then burn it to a disc.

By example, I get the Windows98 SE boot disk. That ISO have 2.6mb, and if I burn the iso, I will lost the remainder 697mb of the disk!

To burn the ISO, I use CD Burner XP or ImgBurn, but I don't know which free tool I can use to add/remove files before burn.

Thank you very much!

Does burning a DVD/CD slower help assure it will not have errors?

If I have 16x speed DVDs and I burn them at 12x or 8x speed, does this help assure the data burnt to the disc will not have errors/flaws?

How does a computer know which CD/DVDs to boot from?

What actually happens when a user reboots his or her system with an OS disk (or other bootable disk) in the CD/DVD drive?

For example, when I put in my OS installation CD and start the computer up, it says "Press any key to continue from CD or DVD...". How this is done on the actual CD/DVD? Because this indicates that when each time CPU is rebooted it first checks the CD drive...

Now my question is, how does a CD/DVD put these contents on it to indicate that it is a normal disk versus a bootable/OS disk? How does the computer identify such discs on boot?

Open source / freeware application for Windows 7 to create ISO images [closed]

I'm looking for a freely available utility I can run on Windows 7 to create CD/DVD ISO images from actual CDs and DVDs.

Any suggestions?

What is the purpose of this 4 pin cable with 3 wires that came with an old IDE DVD-ROM drive?

Stumbled on this cable today, it has 4 pins, of which only three are actually in use. It was found with a quick installation guide of an old DVD-ROM IDE drive and nothing else except some screws, so I'm not even sure it actually belongs to this. My best guess is that it's a power cable, but according to Google, it doesn't looks like one that comes with an IDE drive.