Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Windows Vista: Live File System

If you use Windows Vista and have a CD-RW or DVD-RW burner, there is a cool new feature called 'Live File System'. The Live File System is a new optical disc format that allows you to use CD-RWs or DVD-RWs disks like any other type of digital recordable media.

Let me elaborate, generally once you record a file on optical media it will exist there until you reformat the disk (if you're using recordable optical media). The Live File System allows you to delete, write and change files without having to reformat the media every time. This is very similar to your hard drive, USB drive, or any other type of digital storage.

Note: To use this technology you need a CD-RW or DVD-RW recordable disks, and burner that supports reading and writing this media. This feature will not work on CD-R or DVD-R disks.

By default, Vista will want to format the you optical media using the Live File System. Although there is a down side to this format, it's only readable by Windows Vista and XP.

When you eject the disk when you're doing using it, it might take a short time for it to eject. This is because the OS has close the session on the disk it will be unreadable when you try to use it again.

Formating new media with the Live File System
  • Put a blank disc in the optical drive.
  • Wait for the AutoPlay dialog to display.
  • Select 'Burn files to disc'.
  • Change the disk name then press the Next button.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

hello, great review on this but you are missing the point of this new feature.

you say you need to have CD-RW or DVD-RW discs, you don't you can use normal DVD-R DVD+R CD-R disc.

they don't need to be special re-writable thats the point of this feature.

it doesn't burn data to the disc per say it just turns the disc into a flash drive state, thus no need for the RW brand discs.

yes it will work on RW discs but the whole purpose was to work on regular discs CD and DVD +/-