Newer drives prevent this with big fat buffers - 4 megabytes, say. Some also come with a special chip that keeps the burn laser from losing its place even if the buffer runs out. So I dare not do anything else with the computer during a burn. Despite this precaution, the burn still frequently fails. There's your problem, said a helpful engineer from Roxio Corp., maker of the popular CD-burning software Easy CD Creator.
Burners are surprisingly finicky devices.
Some will work with all brands of blank disks, while others will consistently reject a particular brand. In addition, older, slower CD burners often won't work with the new 16X-rated blanks. So I ducked out to a Radio Shack and bought some blanks rated at a mere 12X. Bingo - a perfect burn. This is just one of the mysteries of burning. We haven't discussed packet writing - a method that lets you burn data files with far less risk of buffer underruns, but can't be used for recording music disks.