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An optical disc is a flat, usually [note 1] disc-shaped object that stores information in the form of physical variations on its surface that can be read with the aid of a beam of light. Optical discs can be reflective, where the light source and detector are on the same side of the disc, or transmissive, where light shines through the disc to ...
An optical disc drive is a device in a computer that can read CD-ROMs or other optical discs, such as DVDs and Blu-ray discs. Optical storage differs from other data storage techniques that make use of other technologies such as magnetism, such as floppy disks and hard disks, or semiconductors, such as flash memory.
The DVD and Blu-ray discs hold a higher capacity of data, so reading or writing those discs in the same 74-minute time-frame requires a higher data transfer rate. Drive speed can be limited intentionally to reduce noise from the drive or slow down ripping , such as the firmware component Riplock .
Floppy disk drives, with capacity of 1.44 MB, have been made obsolete: optical media are cheap and have vastly higher capacity to handle the large files used since the days of floppy disks, and the vast majority of computers and much consumer entertainment hardware have optical writers.
A DVD-RW disc is a rewritable optical disc with equal storage capacity to a DVD-R, typically 4.7 GB (4,700,000,000 bytes). The format was developed by Pioneer in November 1999 and has been approved by the DVD Forum .
Comparison of various optical storage media. This article compares the technical specifications of multiple high-definition formats, including HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc; two mutually incompatible, high-definition optical disc formats that, beginning in 2006, attempted to improve upon and eventually replace the DVD standard.
Overburning may be used to determine the actual capacity limit of a recordable disc, since the capacity rated by recordable disc vendors merely is the guaranteed capacity, beyond which the actual capacity is indefinite. Data located beyond the specified capacity is not guaranteed to be readable.
A CD-ROM (/ ˌ s iː d iː ˈ r ɒ m /, compact disc read-only memory) is a type of read-only memory consisting of a pre-pressed optical compact disc that contains data computers can read, but not write or erase.