OPTICAL DRIVES

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OPTICAL DRIVES

Optical drives vary greatly in computer systems. When looking at a computer system there are two things to consider: the type of drive and the speeds.


Drive Types
There are two basic forms of optical storage used in computers today: compact disc (CD) and digital versatile disc (DVD).
Compact disc storage was derived from the same media that we use from audio compact discs. They storage space averages around 650 to 700 MB of data per disc. They can contain audio, data or both on the same disc. Most software for computers is distributed on CD formats.

DVD was the development for a compact digital video format that also spun off into the data storage arena. DVD is seen primarily for video and not for software distributions. DVD drives are still backwards compatible with CD formats however.

Newer high definition optical storage has also become available in the form of Blu-ray and HD-DVD formats. Each of these is capable of storage high definition video signals or capacities ranging from as low as 25GB to over 200GB depending upon the number of layers on the discs. Due to the extremely high price and limited availability of proper video decoders for movie playback they are not likely to be found in many computer systems.

Writers or burners can be used to save data, create music CDs or video discs that can be played in DVD players. CD recorders are very standardized and should be compatible with almost all equipment out there. Some CD burners maybe be listed as a combo or CD-RW/DVD drive. These can support reading and writing to CD media and can read DVD media.

DVD recorders are a bit more confusing as there are multiple standards that need to be considered. Most DVD burners will record both the DVD-R/RW and DVD+R/RW format but some are still a single format. Also, new DVD burners can support the dual-layered or double layer media that may be listed as DL.

Speed Limit Ahead
 All optical drives are rated by a multiplier that refers to the maximum speed the drive operates when compared to the original CD or DVD standards. It is not the sustained transfer rate while reading the whole disc. To make matters even worse, some drives have multiple speed listings. How does one know what it all means?

Read only or ROM drives can list up to two speeds. For a CD-ROM drive, there is typically a single speed listed which is the maximum data read speed. Sometimes a second CD ripping speed will also be listed. This refers to the speed at which data can be read from an audio CD for conversion to a computer digital format such as MP3. DVD-ROM drives will typically list two or three speeds. The primary speed is the maximum DVD data read speed while the secondary refers to the maximum CD data read speed. Once again, they may list an additional number that refers to the CD ripping speed from audio CDs.

Optical burners get very complicated. They can list over ten different multipliers for the various media types. Because of this, manufacturers tend to just list a single number for the drives and this will be for the DVD media that it can record the fastest at. A 16x drive may run up to 16x when recording on DVD+R media, but it might only run at 2.4x when using the DVD+R dual-layer media.

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