more testings: - I was able to write over 90mb of data to the cdrw. it was without problems (ie maching blowing up as someone else reported). however the write would freeze machien for seconds (as long as 30 sec or even min at time) not even mouse would move then. - the data written onto cd is corrupted. for example [root@pepsi cd1]# tar ztvf ncd19r.tar.gz drwxr-xr-x mrbill/mrbill 0 2000-03-06 14:48:55 ./ -rw-r--r-- mrbill/mrbill 2435664 1999-10-31 14:58:00 Xncd19r gzip: stdin: invalid compressed data--format violated tar: Child returned status 1 tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors [root@pepsi cd1]# gunzip -t ~adam/ncd19r.tar.gz [root@pepsi cd1]# .. so unfortunatelly it is still useless for me for backups :-( -- Adam http://www.eax.com The Supreme Headquarters of the 32 bit registers