You can only store 4 sessions on a CDR and the one your talking about for the label would count as the first one. Also, why not just auto-create the label if the CDR is blank? As well, during any of the sessions you can change the label when you write that session. As well, if you put the CD into a single session compatible CD drive, you will only see the first empty session (yes I know most new drives are multi-session). Unless your writing something like almost a third of the CD each time you will end up wasting most of the CD, in which case, as cheap as the CDR's are now, I would just use a new one each time and put a label on it that matched when the archive was being done (most CDR writing software defaults to the date and time). Otherwise, I would CDRW media and drives to get the most storage out of them.

>>CDR (CD-Recordables) are not formated.
>
>ok,ok,ok ... initialized, then...
>
>> But is it worth to loose (lose) about 15MB of CDR space just for a label
>> in it?!
>
>yes,yes,yes. i'm afraid we have skewed views of what is worth doing
>(and how) in this app because i didn't explain the context.
>
>this portion of the app is an archiving utility, and i definitely want
>the volume labels on the cd's so i can verify that the correct cd is
>loaded (during both writing and later reading). i also record this
>volume label in a network table so users will be able to later retrieve
>the cd containing the required data. and yes, i'm happy to give up 15MB
>out of 650MB for this. cd's are cheap. at least relative to the overall
>cost of the project.
>
>> Anyway, in both cases storing label information will end-up wasting
>> precious space on your CDR/CDRW disk. And... I will not do it this way.
>> As last words: I will suggest that you use AHead Nero Burning ROM
>> for burning CDs and do not bother to do that from your own application.
>
>this will be used frequently and 1) i don't want them coming to bug
>me to do it -- i want my power users to take care of it themselves; and
>2) i want it automated, because it is always POOR practice to enter
>the same data manually in two different places. the data sets aredeleted
>after archival, so it better be archived and labeled correctly.
>this is no place for manual manipulation or intervention.
>
>all i want out of the dll, is to be able to initialize the CDR and to
>finalize the CDR when no more complete data sets will fit on the cd.
>(creating the directories and copying the files to the CDR is trivial).
>these are undoubtedly 2 very simple calls in some dll if i could find
>one with a type library.
>
>thanks, however for your response and for the references.