December 31, 2004

Buying a new PC and trying to figure out whether to get a CD burner or a DVD burner? Well, there is a reason the CD burners are getting so inexpensive, the DVD burner is taking it's place. Why, well capacity is the main issue. A DVD holds almost seven times what a CD holds. Today, most people are ending up with a lot more pictures, music, and videos on their PC. Many are now also starting to edit their camcorder videos. Video files are very large and take up a lot of space. In order to back them up, CD's are almost too small.

As with CD burners, you'll want to use the RW disks to do your backups on, since you can rewrite the data to them. For files like pictures, etc., which you don't intend to change, I recommend backing up to the R type disks. Rewriteable disks, i.e.. CD-RW, DVD-RW, DVD+RW are designed to write files over and over, but may not work on other CD or DVD drives. As with backups, this doesn't matter since you would be restoring to your own computer anyway. Actually, the CD or DVD burner you made the disk on doesn't matter as much as the software it was made with, when you are discussing readability on another machine.

Every different software package uses a different method of writing the data to the disks, so you usually need the same brand of software to read the disks. Some of the software is still able to read other software's files, it just can't write more data to the disk. The CD-R, DVD-R, and DVD+R formats can be read in almost all players and recorders. Once made, the data can't be changed, but more data can be added until the disk is full. You can also check out this discussion for more info. on CD's.  I should also note that they claim that these disks are also supposed to last longer than the rewriteable disks. Whether you are talking CD or DVD, you need to keep in mind that these disks are not made to hold up under direct sun and high heat exposure, so try to keep them in a cool, dry place.

There are also different format DVD recorders. Some are one single format, some are dual format, and a select few are multi format. If you are just talking using it on your computer, it doesn't really matter. Me personally, I still like the multi format. The present formats are DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD+RW, DVD-RW, and DVD-RAM. DVD-RAM is supposed to be the best choice for data backups, but the other RW disks work just fine. On a new computer, the drives are the same price as the CD burners were, and in many cases they are standard or they throw them in for free, so do yourself a favor, and get one on your next computer. You don't really need to be that concerned about the format. Just as a footnote, they claim the DVD-R is the most universal format.

For information on how to create CD and DVD data disks with Windows XP, click here.

As with everything else, they already have new, higher capacity drives on the horizon. Today's recorders use red lasers. New technologies, such as blue lasers offer much higher capacities. Don't worry about trying to keep up with the latest and greatest, just shop for what's there now. If you wait, you'll never get a new system.

If you have any questions or comments, click