Packet writing (or incremental packet writing, IPW) is an
optical disc recording technology
Optical disc authoring requires a number of different optical disc recorder technologies working in tandem, from the optical disc media to the firmware to the control electronics of the optical disc drive.
Types of recordable optical disc
The ...
DVD
The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...
media to be used in a similar manner to a
floppy disk
A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined w ...
from within the
operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...
.
Details
Packet writing allows users to create, modify, and delete files and directories on demand without the need to ''
burn
A burn is an injury to skin, or other tissues, caused by heat, cold, electricity, chemicals, friction, or ultraviolet radiation (like sunburn). Most burns are due to heat from hot liquids (called scalding), solids, or fire. Burns occur mainl ...
'' a whole disc. Packet writing technology achieves this by writing data in incremental blocks rather than in a single block.
Deleting files and directories of a
CD-R
CD-R (Compact disc-recordable) is a digital optical disc storage format. A CD-R disc is a compact disc that can be written once and read arbitrarily many times.
CD-R discs (CD-Rs) are readable by most CD readers manufactured prior to the in ...
using packet writing technology does not recover the space occupied by these objects but, rather, they are simply marked as being deleted (making them effectively ''hidden''). Similarly, changes to files cause new instances to be created instead of replacing the original files. Because of this, the available space on a non-rewritable medium using packet writing technology will decrease every time its content is modified.
The most common file system for packet writing systems is UDF.
Due to the characteristics of optical rewritable media such as
CD-RW
CD-RW (Compact Disc-Rewritable) is a digital media, digital optical disc data storage device, storage format introduced in 1997. A CD-RW compact disc (CD-RWs) can be written, read, erased, and re-written.
CD-RWs, as opposed to CDs, require ...
s and
DVD-RW
DVD recordable and DVD rewritable are optical disc recording technologies. Both terms describe DVD optical discs that can be written to by a DVD recorder, whereas only 'rewritable' discs are able to erase and rewrite data. Data is written ('burne ...
Packet writing is most popularly implemented by Microsoft since
Windows Vista
Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...
, where it is referred to as the
Live File System
Live File System is the term Microsoft uses to describe the packet writing method of creating discs in Windows Vista and later, which allows writeable optical media to act like mass storage by replicating its file operations. Live File System lets ...
Drive Letter Access
Drive Letter Access (DLA) is a discontinued commercial packet writing application for the Microsoft Windows operating system that allows optical disc data storage devices to be used in a manner similar to floppy disks. DLA is a packet writing te ...
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Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...