CD-R/CD-RW

Both are physically same but their writing activity differs.While CD-R is Write Only Read Many (W1R*).CD-RW is Write Many Read Many (W*R*).In both, CD Writing can be done Part by Part (Multisession possible).

If user is interested in keeping the data for long time then he can prefer CD-R as it preserves data for long time( in such a case that there is no too much physical damage).

If user need to store data for temporary period of time then he can prefer CD-RW.

In CD-R, writing is done only once. In CD-RW the same can be overwritten by 40 times.

CD-R can be burnt at a high writing speed of upto 52x (where x denote in range of 1000 kb/s to 2000 kb/s).

But CD-RW can be burnt at low writing speed of 10-20x only. Cost of the CD-R is cheap compared to CD-RW as the former is written once and latter can be overwritten many times.

Time consumed for CD-R is less as writing speed is more. But time consumed by CD-RW is more as writing speed is low and also time taken for erasing the previous data is also taken into consideration.

While erasing the CD-RW there are 2 modes available.First one being the quick erasing which erases just deletes the pointers assigned to main data.

Second is that full erasing of CD-RW which means the deletion of the main data and its pointers.Thus this erasing method is used very rarely as it consumes nearly half an hour to an hour time period.

But both these CDs are used in wide scale..

If you feel that some data are important then copy the data in CD or in higher versions as this storage may be useful in back up operations (if main system crashes then CDs are being used as backup)..