Write more on your CD !!!

Sometimes you must have noticed that you have 1gb of data to write. But you are unable to decide that what media should you use. Because 1 DVD can be more than enough required and 1 CD is not enough for writing the data. And if you use another CD, that would be probably half free. So, you will be confused that what to choose.

We all, have heard about NERO's feature OverBurn, under which NERO can write upto 10 MB extra data on your CD/DVD than its capacity. But have your ever heard that you can write upto 300 MB extra data on your 700 MB capacity CD?

Yes, It is possible. If you are using the Linux. Linux has such powerful features, which can make this happen. So, I hope till now, you will be knowing that what I am going to discuss in this article.

Before I start mentioning the steps, I would like to tell you that USE THIS TRICK COMPLETELY AT YOUR OWN RISK. Neither Go4Expert.com not I will be responsible for any kind of damage done to your system or Media.

Because I believe that Linux is very delicate system. Only the experts should handle it.

So lets start with the steps:
1. You need to download the following tools:

• zisofs-tools (latest) Download link: http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/fs/zisofs
  
• CDRTools (< 2.01) Download link: ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/cdrecord/
  or
  CDRKit (Latest) Download link: http://www.cdrkit.org/releases/
  
• GCC 3.5 or GCC 4 (recommended)

2 a. Compiling CDRTools:

unpack the .tar.gz

Code:

tar -xvzf cdrtools-beta.tar.gz

configure:

Code:

 ./configure -prefix=$HOME/cdrtools

(Replace prefix with anything you like)

compile and installs:

Code:

make && make install

2 b. Compiling CDRKit

unpack the .tar.gz

Code:

tar -xvzf cdrkit-current.tar.gz

configure:

Code:

cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=your/prefix.

compile and install

Code:

make && make install

3. Compiling zisofs-tools

Follow the same steps for zisofs-tools as did for CDRTOOLS, but do not specify a prefix.

Code:

MAN Pages for review:
    -mkzftree : www.man.cx/mkzftree
    -mkisofs : www.man.cx/mkisofs
    -genisoimage : www.man.cx/genisoimage

4. Creating CD/DVD

create a directory tree of cd in sperate directory
create another directory to hold compressed filesystem

mkdir $HOME/compcd

create compressed structure

mkzftree $HOME/cddir $HOME/compcd

Compressed disk structure is created and now lets compile the ISO image.

Switch to prefix/bin of CDRTools or CDRKit (whichever you are using)

use mkisofs or genisoimage respectively

genisoimage -R -z -o cd.iso $HOME/compcd

Burn the ISO image
Insert disk and mount
Change to mount directory and type ls-la for file listing
type df -ha

That's it.

Drawback of this technique is that, this kind of compilation would be readable by linux only and linux which is having latest kernel module.