Types of Optical Disc
Computer Science: OCR A Level, topic 1.3.9
Types of Optical Disc
Each of the three optical media standards can come in any of the following forms:
Read-Only Memory (ROM)
- A CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, or BD-ROM is a disc which can be read only.
- The manufacturer writes the initial data, and this cannot be changed.
- This is often used in content distribution so that people cannot accidentally overwrite the content.
Write-Once (R)
- A CD-R, DVD-R, or BD-R is a disc which can be written once by the user at home.
- Once the user has written data to the disc, they cannot overwrite it.
Re-writable (RW)
- A CD-RW, DVD-RW, or BD-RW is a disc which can be overwritten whenever the user would like to.
- These are often used for backups which might need to be updated in the future.
Test yourself on Types of Optical Disc
What does DVD-ROM mean?
What does BD-R mean?
Which type of optical disk is usually used to distribute games or movies?