7th May 1999

I've been thinking about picking up a CD burner lately. I'm sold on the idea of owning one, but I'm just not sure which brand to go with. You don't need to own a recordable CD drive to make the most from this tip, though. If you use CD-R or CD-RW discs often, you should tweak your CD-ROMs settings. Right-click on 'My Computer' and select 'Properties.' Then click the 'Performance' tab, press the 'File System' button, then select the 'CD-ROM' tab. Then, set the 'Optimize access pattern for' selection to 'No read-ahead.' This should markedly improve performance in CD-R or CD-RW access.