Overburning -- sounds like you're making digital toast, doesn't it? Overburning, a recent phenomenon in the world of CD recording, refers to a drive that can record more than the "rated" maximum capacity of a CD-R disc. For example, a drive that can overburn to 76 minutes can record 76 minutes of music on a standard 74-minute CD-R, or you can use the same drive to store 685MB of data rather than 650MB. The amount you can overburn depends on your recorder and the specific brand of discs you're using.

Overburning is mucho grande, but you must remember two important caveats:

• Most CD-ROM drives made in the past two or three years have no trouble with overburned discs, although some older drives spit them back out as unreadable. Therefore, if you distribute your discs, you probably shouldn't overburn them.
• Media manufacturers don't guarantee their discs past the 74- or 80-minute rating, so you overburn at your own risk.

How does a drive overburn? It uses the lead-out portion of the disc, which was not originally intended to store data; in fact, the lead-out area is supposed to indicate to your drive that it has reached the end of the disc. When you overburn, you're burning past that point. If your read-only CD-ROM doesn't care and can read an overburned CD-ROM, you're, in effect, storing more in the same space.

Important: Any CD recorder can use an 80-minute CD-R disc -- you're not overburning when you put 80 minutes of music or 700MB of data on this kind of media. Again, however, not every recorder can use these larger-capacity discs; check the specifications of any recorder you're considering to see whether it can use 80-minute/700MB discs.