That news was mostly about viruses (the "Goner" virus is making the rounds right now), the Excite e-mail failure (it doesn't affect any of us), and Windows XP (nobody is using it yet, nor does anybody seem eager to use it). We also cruised to a few Web sites for cheerier news, such as Space Daily, which features short news bites about current affairs in space exploration.

Ralph's HP notebook PC has a CD-RW drive, so Ralph proposed that I demonstrate how to use it to create CDs. I'll go over the basics of creating simple "data CDs" here, and I'll tell you about a few very useful freeware and shareware tools that I use in working with CDs.

Its metallic layer can be affected by the laser in the CD-writer in order to create the digital ones and zeroes that hold the data. Depending on the software you use to write to the CD-R, you can add extra data to the disk until you fill it completely; but you can't erase any of the data that is already on the disk.

The other kind of writable CD can be erased; it is a "CD-RW" disk (the "RW" stands for "Re-writable"). Its metallic surface is modified slightly by the drive's laser; the laser power can be changed to undo the modifications, and so the CD can be erased and reused. They are more expensive than CD-R disks, and drives that can erase CD-RW disks are more expensive, too.

So much for the physical differences in recordable CDs; now, what about the differences in the way you can store stuff on them? Well, there are basically six choices. You can make "audio CDs," which hold sounds in a simple manner that can be played on audio equipment such as your home or car stereo—and on your PC's CD drive. You can also create "mixed-mode" and "CD-Extra" audio CDs that hold music and also hold some non-audio content, such as word processing documents describing the music on the CD. Those two kinds of CD are not very common, and not all audio and CD drives support them, or support them properly. We didn't talk much about audio CDs, but later on I'll mention a great tool for helping to make them.

Next, you can create "data CDs" that contain computer files and that can be read on just about any PC—even old DOS PCs. These are the most common kind of CD for computer users; most of the software that you buy nowadays comes on a data CD. Most of my demonstration was about making data CDs.

If you're a real guru, you can create a special kind of data CD that can boot your PC just like a floppy disk can (who remembers booting their PC from a floppy disk?). This is a "bootable CD." Obviously, your PC's BIOS has to support an option to boot from a CD drive. Bootable CDs are rather specialized; I didn't talk about them at the meeting, and I'll skip them in this column.

Finally, some software lets you create a "Direct CD" that is like a data CD, but that can be used more conveniently than a data CD. Burning a data CD is typically a one-shot process; you use a special program to burn it, and you end up with a CD that you can pop into a CD drive for reading, but not for writing. It's like a write-protected floppy.

Direct CD, in contrast, is like using a floppy disk (a big one!). After you prepare the CD for use as a Direct CD disk, you don't need to run any special programs to store files on the CD; you just drag and drop files onto the CD-writer icon using ordinary Windows tools. Direct CD disks can be created by Adaptec's software drivers, and also by some specialized gadgets, such as the Sony MVC-CD1000 digital camera that I use in my business for high-quality digital imaging.

I didn't discuss them much during the meeting, except to sound a cautionary note: In the past, on several different systems, with several different versions of the Direct CD hardware and drivers, I've lost data. And when you lose an entire CD of data, it hurts! So, I've given up on Direct CD. Perhaps the latest versions are better; but I don't want to find out the hard way!

Easy CD Creator lurks in the background and watches the CDs that you pop into the CD-writer drive; if the CD is blank, it pops up a Wizard that guides you through choosing what kind of CD to make, and helps you burn the CD. The latest version of the program even has an animated character like Word's "Mr. Paper Clip" (but easier to dismiss!).

After choosing to make a data CD, you use the Wizard to choose the folders and files to write to the CD. Your selections appear in an Explorer-style window. Then you choose whether to test the CD-writer, or to jump right ahead and burn an actual CD. The "test" choice simulates the entire writing process; it's only needed the first few times you burn a CD on a system, so that you can see whether your system pumps data into the CD-writer fast enough. If it's too slow, the CD can miss some data. The testing process can take a long time, so you don't want to do it each time you burn a CD.

One of the tools that I described can quickly check CDs that you created, so you can skip the Easy CD Creator test and just use the tool to check the CD later. However, if your hard disk is very full and you haven't defragmented it lately, it will slow down the data pumping; you should probably test the writing process in that case.

After deciding whether to test the write process, you can either burn the CD right away, or save your decisions in a "layout" file. You can use layout files to make more copies of a CD later, or to make it easier to always write specific files and folders to a CD (for example, to make regular backups of your documents and private folders). If you don't save the layout file now, you'll get another chance to save it before exiting the program.

If you don't burn the CD right away, you can modify the layout in the Explorer-style window. That gives you a chance to change the "volume name" of the CD that you will burn (otherwise, its default name is a simple numeric date and time code), and to change a few other options. Most of the time the program's default choices work quite well for simple tasks such as burning data CDs, so you won't have to explore the options.

When you do start the recording process, it goes pretty quickly. Ralph's PC could burn CDs at least 4 times as fast as a normal "times 1" CD drive. Still, a full CD might take more than 10 minutes. The last step of the recording process writes a "Table of Contents" to the CD.

An optional step in creating a CD is to make labels for it. The easiest one is the paper label that goes into the jewel case, because it's just two square areas where you can paste text and pictures. Then you print it, cut it out, fold it, and pop it into the CD's jewel case. It's a little harder to develop programs to print the circular adhesive labels that fit on the CD itself, so the earlier versions of Easy CD Creator didn't do that. But the newer versions do; it's a nice way to dress up your CD, especially for businesses. The adhesive labels and the applicator devices are not very expensive, either. Start with a kit that has an applicator and some labels; if you like the applicator (there are several different kinds), then buy more labels for it. I use a big spring-loaded applicator from Memorex; it works well, centering the label properly on the CD every time.

For data CDs, an excellent freeware tool is FileCheck. I found this tool when I was looking for a way to detect data CDs that hadn't been written properly. One of the things that FileCheck can do is to quickly read an entire data CD. It reads every single byte of every folder and file on the CD; if there are any bad spots on the CD, it will notice them. (Incidentally, it can also read an entire floppy, hard drive or network drive, making it a great tool for checking for read errors.)

So, after burning a data CD, you can run FileCheck on it to verify that the CD was burnt correctly. But that's not all that FileCheck can do: it also creates a neat text file that lists every folder and file on the CD. So, it's an easy way to get a nice printout of a CD's contents.

Interestingly, those two functions aren't the primary purpose of FileCheck. It's really a tool for calculating the "CRC" (Cyclic Redundancy Checksum) of a file, a folder of files and folders, or a volume of files and folders. I wrote about CRCs for Sacra Blue way back in August 1989 (issue #85). In short: A file's CRC is a number that is like a "fingerprint" for the file. Once you have computed a file's CRC, it will always be the same unless someone edits that file, in which case the CRC is almost certain to change. So, documenting a file's CRC is a good way of checking that it's the version of the file that you think it is—that it hasn't been edited, replaced, or infected by a virus, for example.

I use FileCheck to keep track of which version of a CD I have shipped to a client, as well as using it to check the CD burning process and to make lists of all the files on a CD, floppy, folder, or entire hard drive.

Now, if you do copy CDs legitimately with Easy CD Creator, you'll find it easy to do, even with only a single CD-writer drive and no CD-ROM drive (that's the setup that Ralph's notebook PC has). Easy CD Creator automatically copies the files and folders from the original CD onto your hard drive. Then it prompts you for a blank CD, writes the files and folders onto the CD, and gets rid of the temporary copies on your hard drive. It's all very easy (especially if you remember doing the old "floppy shuffle" to copy diskettes in DOS!).

I hope to see you all at our next meeting: Wednesday, January 23, 2002, at 7:00 p.m. in the large meeting room at the Davis Public Library. In the meantime, my best wishes for you and yours during this holiday season!