I have 27GB of files that I'm trying to back up using tar and my DVD writer. I am able to do this by creating the tar volumes in my home directory then burning them aftwerwards. I'm using the following command to create the tar volumes: tar -L 3906000 -cpMf backup.tar dirtobackup Doing it this way allows me to divide the tarball into several similar sized chunks and fit them on dvd's but the disadvantages are that I have to type a new name for each tar chunk and these chunks take up space in my home directory. I also then have to issue another command to burn them: growisofs -Z /dev/cdrom=backup.tar This makes restoration a pain since I then must either copy the burned volumes, naming them exactly as previously specified during tar creation or I must create symlinks to /dev/cdrom named exactly as the volumes are named. What I trying to do is write the tar volumes directly to my DVD writer using the following command: tar -L 3906000 -cpMf /dev/cdrom dirtobackup When I do this I get the following error: tar: /dev/cdrom: Cannot open: Read-only file system I've seen numerous examples of people writing directly to tape and floppy drives using tar by supplying the device node name for the file option. I'm wondering why this method is isn't working for my DVD writer and what my options are.