Did you know you can use a dvdrw as a flash drive?

[GhostMjr]

Maybe I am slow but I only just found this out!

Any idea whether you can do the same thing with a bdrw yet?

You can use a dvdrw in this way by looking at the video below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RhfMQWxt1U

[TeaLeaf]

I'm trying to think of the 'why would you want to' and I'm struggling.  What am I missing?

[ArithonUK]

It's called "packet writing" and it's been around as long as CD-RW drives. I encountered it in 2001 and I haven't used it since 2003. The problem with it, is you are just adding to disc.

Think of storage as a bottle of milk. With USB, you pour in your milk (data), then when you erase it, you pour the milk out again.
With packet writing, you pour in the milk but when you go to erase it, you freeze it solid and add new milk on top. Eventually the bottle gets filled up and the only way to clear it is to pour in boiling water (reformat) losing everything in there.
Also, because packet wriitng is VERY slow, the data can get written, but the file allocation table won't, corrupting the whole thing (usually caused by the write-behind cache being used to "speed" things up). There is also a finite number of times you can override the file allocation table (around 40 from memory) so you only get a few chances to add or erase.

USB storage is much faster, more reliable and way, way cheaper.

Yes, Ghosty you were rather late to spot this one!!!

[T-Bag]

You're not using it as a flash drive, you're just writing as you copy. So whereas in usual mode you'd have to click "write to disk" or something similar, you don't anymore. Or at least that's how it seems. I don't know why you'd want to do this. You can get a USB flash drive of a micro/mini/regular SD card that will be better in every way.

Fraction of the size 32GB is smaller than a thumb nail not 7 DVDs (or 46 CDs), Cost Wise you pay 50ppGB for SD or USB, 42ppGB for CD-RW, and 18.6ppGB for DVD-RW so the optical media might look viable till you factor in how easily broken it is. A few scratches and it's doomed. Then on top of that lets be generous as say the RW media has 100 writes. USB has conservatively 10,000 and some claim up to 1 million. Not hard to see who wins that round. You go from something that will die within a year, to something that will possibly last so long you'll only throw it away because it's a depressing reminder that you actually used to get away with only 4GB of storage, and not because of physical failure.

Final nail in the coffin is, I can't think of a computer around that doesn't have USB. I've used computers so old the have ISA slots and they've got USB. Whereas a large number of computers ship without DVD-RW drives. Any netbook or tablet device doesn't for sure. Optical media is slowly dying, it's being kept alive by the film industry, but for computers I can see flash replacing it fairly fast. So yes, I think you were a little late on the uptake.

[Luminance]

It took him so long to copy and delete such small files? Why would you like that?