I have recently bought a Liteon 851S DVD-RW and have had some problems in formatting CD-R. I have tried various brands but they all gave a message “Format operation failed: The drive received an invalid command”.
I used Roxio Easy CD & DVD Creator 6.
Please advise what to do?
Try formatting them with a different application. RecordNow should have came bundled with the drive on the Sonic CD. If you are having problems finding it read this.
Hmmmmm
Well i dont think that you can format cd-r’s as well as DVD±R’s. the only medias that you can format are RWs(rewritables). ´
If you can do format cdr’s tell me how 
regards
ronallan22
Good catch, sometimes I miss the little things like that. Was thinking CD-RW as soon as I saw format 
If you are trying to format a CD-R, it can’t be done. CD-R are indeed write once only media.
You do not have to try and format them before writing either, any such issues are dealt with during the burn process.
Get CD-RW’s if you want to be able to format them to use more then once.
Thanks, Ssseth. I put in a blank CD-RW and tried to “drag and copy”, the same error message “format operation failure…” appeared.
Do I understand it correctly that a DVD-RW can read and write the CD-RW?
I am new to the use of DVD-RW, grateful if you can help.
You need to format your CD-RW or DVD-RW media into packet writing format, using dedicated for that purpose soft - Nero InCD, Roxio DirectCD, Sonic DLA or similar one.
Just afterwards you will be anle to “drag-and-drop” files to it.
Screw
Thanks, Screw24,
I am already using Roxio Easy CD & DVD Creator 6. However, when I tried to format the CD-RW, it gave the same error message “Format operation failed…”.
Is it a hardware or software problem?
I am not sure about Roxio soft (never used that one), but Easy CD, AFAIK, is for CD burning, it means, writing on CD-R or CD-RW in CDFS file system format. In this format you write CD once and for RW you have to erase it before writing new content to it. For that CDFS file system there is no such a term as “format media”.
To use CD-RW as big floppy (write, delete, write again) you have to use packet writing software (I do not know if DirectCD is coming together with Easy CD, or you have to buy it separately). In Nero case there is InCD packet writing software. All of that software really formats RW media in another file system format, called UDF and uses special part of the CD as directory pointer, which is rewritten, when you write or delete files to media. So for such a format you have to “format media” first, like with floppies.
I suppose, you are trying to “drag-and-drop” files to your burning drive, but for windows it means - using packed format. Since you have not formated your RW media by packet software (and Easy CD is not the one), it says - “wrong format”.
I do not think easy CD itself allows you to format CD-RW in packed format. With this soft you can just burn CDFS on CD-s.
With DVD creator you can burn DVD-s in UDF file system, but not in packet format.
Screw
Hmmmm
Actually I dont recommend DragandDrop packing Software such as INCD cos usually if you want to format the cd/dvd RW to normal again the media becomes crappy (read failures and such). And you have to remember that if you use it on another comp youll have to install the UDF Packing software there also.
Regards
ronallan22