Q I am unable to burn my music cassette audio tapes to CD-R's successfully. I am able to burn all data files on my hard drive and copy registered software on CD to CD-Rs for backup purposes. When I try to do this from a 90-minute audio tape by first recording it to my hard drive, I am only able to get a one minute copy of the first track on that audio cassette.

A One likely source of problems is the phenomenon known as buffer underrun. When writing a CD you need to keep writing at the same speed throughout. If the data isn't being transferred at a rate that matches the speed that the CD is being written at, then the CD drive has no data to write and the recording is ruined.

The reason why this might happen with an audio CD recording and not with a data recording is that CD audio requires streaming more bits per second. The simplest solution is to set the recording speed as low as possible. The CD recording software should allow you to do a test write to see if the options are working before actually burning a CD.

The number of causes of buffer underrun are too numerous to go into details here. They included highly fragmented drives, not enough space in the temporary directory, the use of compression on the source drive and incorrect device settings. The first thing to try is to download the latest drivers for your CD-R and SCSI adaptor. In addition, Adaptec provides quite a good list of possible causes and solutions (see www.adaptec.com/support/faqs/bufunder.html.)