Thanks to all, let me share with you my experience

I paid special attention to your suggestion since your cd-rw drive is similar to my plextor 12/10/32A.

After fiddling about a number of cd-rw software (nero, adaptec easy cd creator, plextor pm2k) and 2 different OSes (win2k, win98se), here're my findings:
1. win2k is bad for burning cd-rw with ANY of the said software,
2. adaptec easy cd creator is bad for burning cd-rw on any of the said OS,
3. nero on win98se yields the best result overall,


But the strange thing is that even with nero on win98se, after each large re-write (ie. 500mb - 600mb of files) onto the cd-rw disk, it takes at least one full minute to refresh the content of the newly-written disk. Nero has a nasty and very misleading habit of giving "drive invalid" error message before that full refresh takes effect, almost fooling me into thinking that the session was a failure. I wonder if you also have to wait that long to be able to properly read a CD-rw disk after a writting?

Also, plextor always open the tray whenever it finishes writing, why does it do this and how can I stop it?