format disc

Hi I am a total novice to all this technology . I have a digital camera which i down load my photos to my laptop but now I want to put some on a disc to give to people. I went and bought a pack of discs which are DVD_R but when I put it in the laptop and click on the icon it says it is not accessable?

Do I need to format it like you used to have to with floppy discs and if so how do I do this.

All help appreciated

hi,

is your disk drive compatible with the DVD-R types of disk?...it should say on the door that ejects out

If you are putting phots on a disk a normal CD +/- r would do the trick

It doesnt say anything on my disc drive, but my friend previously copied photos to her discs from this laptop not a bother but we cant firgure out why it worked on her discs and not mine as they are both DVD R discs

Are you sure her discs were DVD-R and not CD-R?
On the tray of most Drives it should give you icons for it's compatability (currently on work PC and on the front of the tray has the DVD symbol with R/RW below, a large RW logo with DVD ReWritable on it to the right of that and the compact disc logo again with ReWritable on it in the furthest right position). It may be different on your tray due to possible styling for a laptop.

Once you put the disc (assuming it is the correct type for your burner - no point in putting a DVD-RW into a CD-R drive) into your machine it shouldn't be any more complicated than opening the correct software. Do you know what software is on your laptop for writing CDs? Probably be one of the more common ones such as Nero. Depending on the software it'll be slightly different, but basically it's select to make a "Data CD" (or CD-RW, or DVD etc.), browse to the content you want to add and select it, then click finish/burn. No need for formatting etc.

jelly74 said:

It doesnt say anything on my disc drive, but my friend previously copied photos to her discs from this laptop not a bother but we cant firgure out why it worked on her discs and not mine as they are both DVD R discs

Click to expand...

As Setanta says, there are usually logos on the disc drive (even on laptops) saying Compact Disc or DVD or both.

Typically with Windows XP, inserting a blank CD or DVD (if you have a DVD burner) will (give you the option to) open up a Writable Folder in Windows to which you can just copy files. This may be what your friend has done.

However, depending on how recent the drive/laptop is, you may not have this option and may have to open specific DVD or CD writing software which should have come with the drive (or come preinstalled on the laptop) such as Roxio, Nero, Sonic etc.

In my experience, Nero is the best of these and is often more reliable than the Writable Folder in Windows.

If you're not sure if you have a DVD writer, why not put in a DVD Video disc to see if it is at least a DVD-ROM drive?

In any case, CD-R (writable CDs) are usually plenty big enough for hundreds of photos unless you use a really big format such as RAW.