Limitation​s & assumption​s in CD burning

[New7user7]

I tried to burn a single 400MB (or so) file to CD, and it got stuck for hours partway through. Is there a file size limit in the burning process? It was a blank CD, and I asked to have it treated like as USB stick when prompted, which I seem to recall was similar to UDF packet writing. In case it matters (I suspect it doesn't), it was a zip file of selected parts of a file tree.

After cutting up the coaster & disposing of it, I tried again, but this time, I descended to selected nodes in the subtree and zipped selected sub-subtrees (i.e., nodes in the subtree that I zipped up above), then got rid of the sub-subtree for which I had created a zip file. It seemed to work fine this time. However, when I ejected the CD, Windows said to wait while it closed the session so that it could be used in other computers. Hopefully, that doesn't mean finalizing the disc, i.e., I can still write (overwriting some files if desired) as if it was a USB stick.

P.S. From a quick google, I didn't come across a mention of some file size limit that people were running into.

 

[Sub Styler]

Chances are it was a bad disc. I assume you are burning onto a RW disc, then you will be able to re-write files. Closing the session is not the same as finaising the disc. It is establishing file system data for the disc which will be re-written next time. I have accidentally burnt whole disc images files (.iso) to disks before as opposed to writing the image data to the disc, these are usually around 650mb so do not indicate a file size limit. Using CD's for large file storage is not recommended as it will be VERY slow if trying to open the ZIP from CD. When it comes to using the ZIP I would copy the file back to HDD before opening it.

 

[New7user7]

It was a write-once. Faster to write, and more reliable longevity. Surprising to find a bad CD these days, they're so quality controlled. Thanks for clarifying the distinction between closing the sesion and finalizing the disc. And I do see that opening large zip files can be slow, especially from CD. Hopefully, this is sufficiently mitigated by my only zipping up sub-trees within the file tree.