Types of CD Drives
CD-ROM ... CDROM

Before you can pick cd drives for your computer, you need to know a little about what types of drives there are and what to use them for. It wouldn't hurt to know a little about what a CD-ROM is also.

Compact Disc Read Only Memory is the full term for the acronym CD-ROM. Read Only means you can't edit the information stored, it can only be read. Once saved, the CD stays that way.

CD’s are round flat discs that measure 4.7 inches in diameter. They hold in excess of 600 MB of data -- that’s like a set of encyclopedias! If you used floppies to store the same data, you would need about 400 floppy disks.

CD’s are ideal to store extremely large amounts of data including large images, animation, audio, and video. Buying the fastest drive your budget will allow gives you the speed you need to view and store many multimedia files.

What is a CD-ROM Drive?

CD ROM Drives are hardware installed in your computer that reads data from a CD-ROM (disc). Most CD drives are internal (fit in a drive bay), but they can be external (plug in). Most now connect by USB or firewire.



The features of a CD-ROM drive helps categorize it, the most important feature is the speed. These drives come as single-speed, double-speed (2X), triple-speed (3X), quadruple-speed (4X), hex-speed (6X) or odo-speed (8X), deca-speed (10x), or triple quad-speed (12x). Multi-speed drives (20X, 24X, 32X) also significantly improve a system's performance when handling image files, but these generally cost a little more.

What's The Speed All About?

The speed of disc drives are calculated in relation to the data transfer rate. The data transfer rate is how much data is read and relayed to the computer within a second. The data transfer rate is measured in bytes per second. You want to look for a higher data transfer rate plus shorter access time to get the best performing drive. For example, a CD-ROM with 900 KB/sec transfer rate can read and transmit 900K (921,600) to a PC within 1 second.

The speed is also measured in terms of its access rate. Access time is how long it takes for a drive to find the target data. The shorter the access time, the better the performance. "One third stroke" is a term often used when discussing access time. Stroke is the distance from the inner track to the outer track of a disk, meaning the time it takes to read data by scanning 1/3 stroke over the disk.

CD-R vs. CD-RW

In addition to standard CD-ROM you can also purchase a CD-R or a CD-RW.

CD-R is Compact Disc Recordable and allows you to permanently store data on a CD by recording to it. This type of storage space makes it easy to transfer data intensive files like multimedia presentations, music files, and other software applications for backup or moving to other computers.

CD-RW stands for Compact Disc Rewritable and is similar to CD-R, but allows you to overwrite data on the CD as needed, so it works more like a floppy disk but holds a lot more information!

Another option is a DVD/CD-RW combo drive which gives you the best of both worlds with rewriteable CD drives and the ability to play DVDs as well.

CD drives can play all CD's, but CD drives cannot play DVD's. Even with this limitation, you should have at least one dedicated CD drive.

My recommendation is:

1. Get the internal CD/DVD rewritable drive if you plan on using the CD's for backup or to transfer data from one computer to another. These days, CD-RW is a bare minimum must for your computer build;

2. Get a recordable (CD-R) if you want permanent copies;

3. If you may play DVD's, get the combo unit or even an external DVD burner;

4. If you want the speed and the ability to use any sorts of digital disc media, go for the dedicated units and get the Blu-Ray disc burner as well if you want it.

To really get top of the line, get a Blu-Ray disc burner -- you can burn DVDs, play CDs, store a ton of data, and copy the latest in Blu-Ray disc technology in games and movies.

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