CD, DVD, +, -, R, W, RW Optical Drives !!

DVD/CD Drive – These are “optical” drives. A laser scans the CD or DVD to read the information stored on the disks. CD’s can hold 100’s of times more information than the old floppy disk, while DVD’s can hold 1000’s more MegaBytes of information . DVD media disks come in single sided (4.7GB) and double sided formats which hold twice the amount of a single sided disk.
It is highly likely that you will need to purchase an optical drive for your PC, unless you have a spare one or even an old one lying around. The reason you need one is that the operating system (Windows or Linux) come on a cd and needs to be installed on your Hard Disk.
Once again you’ll find loads of choice when trying to find the right drive. You can have a plain CD reader (does what it says), a CD-Rewriter (enables you to store your information on one CD rather than loads of floppys), a DVD reader or even a DVD-Writer (allows you to store multiple cds on one DVD disk.) however there are lots of different formats of dvd disks and drives, so you need to make sure that you get the correct disks for your drive. the hardware requirements of any optical drive will be specified either on the retail box or on the drive itself. Check this to make sure your system can handle it. Some older computers may not be able to cope with DVD “Burning” for example.
DVD Media Formats:

DVD-R
Can only write these once before they become “read only”
DVD-RW
Can be written on 1000’s of times, cost slightly more, take longer to write.
DVD+R
Slight more expensive than DVD-R media but can write at speeds of 8x.
DVD+RW
Same as DVD-RW but used in DVD+ format drives.
DVD-RAM
Most reliable, “drag and drop” write capability, can be rewritten 100,000’s of times.

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