Digital Bits Technology Column QnA

Question:

I have an excel file on a floppy that I want to copy to a CD.  When I burn the CD it gives me a “read only file” which I can’t make changes on.  What am I doing wrong?

Answer:

1) You may have purchased and burned the wrong type of CD. A “CD-R” type can be written to just once. You can’t later rewrite to it. A “CD-RW” is the re-writable type. This is what you want to purchase so that you can later make changes to the files it contains.

There’s also a second possibility:

2) In your CD burner software, you may have the option to “Finalize“. Make sure this option is turned OFF for whatever it is you’re trying to burn. Finalizing a disc (even a CD-RW) will make it so that you can’t write to it anymore.

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