Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Mount Rainier
Mount Rainier is a rewritable optical standard developed by Philips, Sony, Microsoft, and
HP (Compaq). Also called EasyWrite (see
Figure 11.18
), Mount Rainier was designed to
enable native OS support for data storage on rewritable optical discs.
Figure 11.18
The EasyWrite logo is used on some CD-RW and DVD+R/RW drives manufactured in 2003
and beyond that support the Mount Rainier standard.
Mount Rainier's main features include these:
•
Integral defect management
—Standarddrivesrelyondriversoftwaretomanagede-
fects.
•
Direct addressing at the 2KB sector level to minimize wasted space
—Standard
CD-RW media uses a block size of 64KB.
•
Background formatting so that new media can be used in seconds after first in-
sertion
—Standard CD-RW formatting can take up to 45 minutes depending on drive
speed.
•
Standardized command set
—Standard software cannot work with new drives until
revised command files are available.
•
Standardized physical layout
—Differences in standard UDF software can make
reading media written by another program difficult.
Mount Rainier compatibility is also known as CD-MRW or DVD+MRW compatibility.
Drives with the Mount Rainier or EasyWrite logo have this compatibility built in, but
some existing CD-RW drives can be updated to MRW status by reflashing the firmware
in the drive.
You must also have OS or application support to use Mount Rainier. Windows Vista and
later have Mount Rainier support built in; Linux kernel version 2.6.2 and above also in-
cludeMountRainiersupport.ForWindowsXPoroldereditions,youmustuserecentver-
sions of Nero AG Software's InCD or Roxio's DirectCD or Drag-to-Disc or other Mount
Rainier-compatible programs to support Mount Rainier.
