Last-modified: 2000/09/21
Version: 2.22
These are intended to be brief (if somewhat incomplete) answers to basic questions. More detailed information can be found later in the FAQ. For example, section (1-5), "How much can they hold?", is answered in far more detail in section (7-6).
CD-R is short for "CD-Recordable". Recordable CDs are WORM (Write Once, Read Multiple) media that work just like standard CDs. The advantage of CD-R over other types of optical media is that you can use the discs with a standard CD player. The disadvantage is that you can't reuse a disc.
A related technology called CD-Rewritable (CD-RW) allows you to erase discs and reuse them, but the CD-RW media doesn't work in all players. CD-Rewritable drives are able to write both CD-R and CD-RW discs.
All CD recorders can read CDs and CD-ROMs, just like a standard CD-ROM drive.
The CDs you buy in a store are pressed from a mold. CD-Rs are burned with a laser. They may look different (often green, gold, or blue instead of silver), they're less tolerant of extreme temperatures and sunlight, and they're more susceptible to physical damage. Whether CD-Rs or pressed CDs last longer is difficult to answer.
While they're not physically identical, they work just the same. Some CD players and CD-ROM drives aren't as good at reading CD-R and CD-RW discs as they are at reading pressed CDs, but by and large they work just fine.
By the way, you can't record on pressed discs, so you might as well throw out all those AOL CD-ROMs you've been accumulating. Buying a bunch of old CDs in the hopes of writing new stuff onto them is a bad idea. You have to buy blank CD-R or CD-RW media.
Yes. You can create CD-ROMs from data on your hard drive, and you can create new audio CDs from anything you can record into a WAV or AIFF sound file. With an audio-only CD-Recorder, which hooks up to your stereo system instead of your computer, you can record directly from CD, cassette, DAT, or whatever.
The CD-ROMs you produce will play in ordinary CD-ROM drives, and the audio CDs you create will work in your home or car CD player.
Writing to CD-Rs and CD-RWs requires a special drive. You can't write CDs with an ordinary CD-ROM drive.
Yes, both audio and data CDs can be duplicated. You can even create audio CDs that are compilations of other audio CDs (perhaps a personal "best of" disc).
Bear in mind that most CDs are protected by copyright laws.
About 74 minutes of audio, or about 650MB of data.
Some CD-R blanks can hold 80 minutes of audio, or about 700MB of data.
Yes and no. The process can be a bit more involved than that, and requires special software that (usually) comes bundled with the drive.
With "packet writing" software, and a recorder that supports it, you can treat a CD-R or CD-RW disc like a floppy. Generally speaking, you can only write to each part of the disc once, so deleting files doesn't gain any space. There are other limitations as well.
With more traditional software -- necessary if you want the broadest possible compatibility -- you usually end up writing everything to the disc all at once. When you're doing the writing you can't interrupt the drive, and you can't reclaim the space you've used. If you want to write your files in smaller bunches, you lose a fair bit of space every time you stop and start again.
Nothing. This FAQ is about CD-R and CD-RW, and only crosses over into DVD when the two technologies rub up against each other.
To learn more about DVD, try http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html.
Not directly. CD and DVD are very different formats, so you can't write DVDs with your CD recorder. You may be able to convert the contents into a lower-quality format though.
I don't know. I don't track prices. There are web sites dedicated to finding the lowest prices, and you can do a little research with a web browser, starting perhaps with the vendors listed in section (8-3).
Yes, from the manual that comes with your recorder and software. There's no information of this type in the FAQ because there are far too many permutations of hardware and software, and the instructions would have to be updated with every new release of the software.
Yup. You can download MP3s, write them to a CD, and play it in anything that handles audio CDs. In fact, many of the popular CD recording programs will decode the MP3s for you.
It's also possible to take songs from a CD and convert them to MP3s for use in an MP3 player.
Section (3-27) has more details.
There are some really good glossaries on the web. Try these:
This FAQ contains a great deal of information, but it's geared toward answering specific questions rather than providing a general education. Some of the other net resources are more like a tutorial than a Q&A list, and may provide a better starting point.
Mike Richter has a primer on CD-R at http://resource.simplenet.com/.
Adaptec has a lot of information at http://www.adaptec.com/cdrec/.
I get a lot of questions about digital audio extraction that are answered at http://www.tardis.ed.ac.uk/~psyche/cdda/.
You may be reading an out-of-date copy of the FAQ. Some sites like to make a copy of the FAQ with the version, date, and contact information stripped off the top (in violation of section (0-1)), which makes it hard to tell when it was last updated. The FAQ is updated about once a month, and the most recent version is always available from http://www.fadden.com/cdrfaq/.
If you are reading the current version, either the section hasn't been updated in a while (check the date in the section), or something has slipped past me.
FAQ Copyright © 2000 by Andy McFadden. All Rights Reserved.