Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Writing CD/DVD ISO file using cdrecord on Linux Machine

Many of us are used to use propriety software for burning CD/DVD with Windows machine. For burning software like Nero, etc. people are spending hundred of Dollars($). But same thing you can do on Linux free of cost. You can either use GUI package like K3B or command line cdrecord. I tried both but cdrecord makes me more comfort.
Here is the command by using you can burn CD/DVD.

CD:
# cdrecord -v -dao speed=4 dev=/dev/cd /path/to/Fedora-13-i386-CD.iso

CDRW:
# cdrecord -v -dao speed=4 dev=/dev/cdrw /path/to/Fedora-13-i386-CD.iso

DVD:
# cdrecord -v -dao speed=4 dev=/dev/dvd /path/to/Fedora-13-i386-DVD.iso

DVDRW:
# cdrecord -v -dao speed=4 dev=/dev/dvdrw /path/to/Fedora-13-i386-DVD.iso

Check the different options which is used in above commands:

-v - turns on verbose mode.

-dao - puts us in Disc At Once mode. Since you're burning an ISO image here, you don't want to add any more data later in a future 'session', so you can just instruct cdrecord to put it in one session and finalise the disc.

speed=4 - you keep the burning speed down as it is more likely to burn properly and not fail. You can experiment with higher speeds if you want, but don't go higher than either your media or burner state they can do (and do

dev=/dev/dvd - this is the device node for your DVD drive. It's usually safe to put /dev/dvd here, but if that doesn't work, you may need to use /dev/cdrom or something else.

Finally, specify the path to the ISO image you want to burn.

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Enjoy !!