-ROM, -R, +R, +RW? Understanding the optical drive alphabet soup - lindseysamot1957

Nick248 asked the Answer Line forum about optical drives. I figured it was clock time to die out over the varied types of CDs, DVDs, and Blu-light beam discs, and the drives that read and write to them.

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I pot't charge anyone for being confused. We've got three types of physics discs (CDs, DVDs, and BDs), with quintet different capacities between them. In that location are discs you can only translate from, discs you buns also write to, and discs you posterior write to, erase, and write to again. And the acronyms aren't ever helpful.

Let's set out with the acronym that appears before the hyphen, which tells you the standardized disc format:

CD-: Compact Disc. These hold about 700MB of data. A CD parkway hindquarters but register or write CDs.

DVD-: Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc. They usually hold about 4.7GB. Videodisk drives can also treat CDs.

BD-: Blu-ray Disc. This has to cost the inferior tech acronym since FLOPS. I mean, shouldn't there be an R in there somewhere? Fortunately, they'Ra oft called Blu-ray drives and discs. They usually guard 25GB. The drives are CD and DVD congenial.

The acronym after the hyphen tells you what you can do therewith type of disc or that type of drive.

-ROM: Read-Only Memory. You cannot write to a -ROM disc, which left the manufactory with data already connected it. A -ROM drive can scan discs but non spell to them, and has zero use in the least for a space disc.

-R: Recordable. You can write to one of these discs once (provided you have an -R drive). But when you're done, it's effectively a -ROM disc.

-RW: Rewritable. Other stupid acronym, that always advisable "read and write" to me. You tush compose to these discs, erase them, and write to them again.

-RE: Recordable Erasable. The Blu-ray magnetic variation of -RW, with a far more sensible acronym.

Here are a few other terms you may wish to bang:

Burn: Write to a disc. It's called burning because it's through with a optical maser, not a pen.

DVD+R; +RW; ±R, ±RW: There are two standards for recordable and rewritable DVDs: DVD–R and DVD+R, from each one with its equivalent weight RW variant, and all requiring its possess type of drive and blank shell disc. The ± sign, which you'll only find on drives, tells you that the drive can burn both – and +. Near all drives these days are ±, making the difference between +R and -R irrelevant.

DL: Dual Layer. This doubles or nearly doubles the electrical capacity of DVDs and BDs. A DVD DL can hold about 9GB; a Blu-ray, about 50GB. To burn discs with these capacities, you need DL discs, plus a DL drive. Whatsoever DVD or Blu-ray drive can read DL discs.

Read the originative forum discussion.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/461650/rom-r-r-rw-understanding-the-optical-drive-alphabet-soup.html

Posted by: lindseysamot1957.blogspot.com