DVD and CD R for Your Computer

With a CD Writer you can make your own CDs with your computer. One can copy music CDs, or make data CDs to back up your files. A CD generally holds over 600mb of data. Most copied CD’s will be able to be played on your home CD player or car system. There are two types of disk used, the CD-R (CD write able) which cannot be erased once written to, and the CD-RW (CD re write able) which can be written to and erased and re written to multiple times. Blank discs to record to are inexpensive, with the CD-RW disc being slightly more.

Another option is to get a CD-RW/DVD combo drive, which is a bit more expensive but can also play DVDs on your computer.

Now there are DVD RW (DVD writer) on the market. They allow one to make DVDs and record data. These disks can take over 4Gb worth of data, but the write speeds are much slower than a CD RW. There are also two types of DVD writers - plus and minus. The different formats were designed by different companies, but are very similar. Some DVD writer drives are compatible with both formats but will probably cost a little extra. It should not matter which format you choose as most new DVD players can read both.