LabsNotes: Recording CD and DVD Media on OpenVMS
Interested in recording ODS-2, ODS-5 or ISO-9660:1988 volume structures for use on OpenVMS?
Interested in recording CD and DVD optical media on OpenVMS?
Capabilities around direct CD and DVD recording on OpenVMS are available, and — with any of various IDE ATAPI devices and an Alpha or Integrity server, or with a SCSI CD-R/RW drive with any of the architectures.
The HoffmanLabs OpenVMS CD and DVD Recording LabsNotes (16-Dec-2009 edition; minor updates) on recording CD-R, CD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW and other recordable optical media on OpenVMS is now available for download. Various CD-R/RW and DVD+R/RW disk drives have been connected to OpenVMS.
This LabsNotes covers the OpenVMS V7.3-1 CDRTOOLS/CDRECORD recording features and the V8.3 COPY/RECORDABLE_MEDIA recording features, CDDVD tools, as well as details of the media, of the OpenVMS volume structures, the OpenVMS bootstrap structures and related tools, and of the recording process itself.
HoffmanLabs offers OpenVMS mastering services and related information.
Errata
There's a reference in the PDF to the ODS2 documentation that's incorrect; the ODS2 spec is on Freeware 5, and not Freeware 4. It's also available in various other locations.
Maximum DVD+R capacity, in blocks
DVD+R disks — single-layer — are typically maximally 9,180,416 blocks in size; if you're creating a container file, this is the size to use. You can create a smaller partition, and record less than the full capacity of the disk.
DVD+RW disks are typically usually 9,180,416 blocks in size; smaller recordings are not provided within COPY /RECORDABLE_MEDIA.
CD-R disks are generally 1,200,000 to 1,400,000 blocks for the 600 MB and 700 MB media, respectively, and smaller quantities of data can be recorded; you can create a smaller partition and record less than the full capacity of the disk.
Like DVD+RW, CD-RW media is also usually full-sized and full-disk recording; smaller quantities of recorded data are not provided within COPY /RECORDABLE_MEDIA.
Creating CD or DVD Media for use on Windows, Mac OS X or Linux
If you're looking to record CD or DVD volumes to allow Windows, Linux, Mac OS X or various other platforms to read the contents of the generated disk, you will generally want to record an ISO-9660:1988 structure, or a dual-format ODS-2 or ODS-5 and ISO-9660 structure.
To create this structure in the LD partition described in the LabsNotes recording document, you can use the Freeware mkisofs tool (a component of various cdrtools packages, and versions can be found on the OpenVMS Freeware) or you can use Larry Kilgallen's LJK/CDROM ISO-9660 volume structure creation package.
CDburnerPro XP
If you are recording or replicating bootable disk images using a Microsoft Windows PC and a CD or DVD recording drive for use booting OpenVMS, the CDburnerXP Pro package has been seen to successfully generate disk images. It's also free. Some of the major commercial optical media recording tools for Windows have shown mixed results with OpenVMS disk images, variously corrupting the ODS-2 or ODS-5 disk structures involved.