CD-Rs CD_RWs DVD's

The most prevalent types of compact discs are those used by the music industry to store digital recordings and CD-ROMs used to store computer data.

Both of these types of compact disc are read-only, which means that once the data has been recorded onto them, they can only be read, or played.

Another type of compact disc, called CD-Rs and CD_RWs, can have their data erased and overwritten by new data.

Currently, erasable optical storage is too slow to be used as a computer's main storage facility, but as the speed improves and the cost comes down, optical storage devices are becoming a popular alternative to tape systems as a backup method.

Any brand of CD-Rom (the one that reads CD's) or CDRW's (the one that reads+writes+re-writes CD's) or DVD (the one that plays Video Disks) or DVD-RW (the one that plays and Writes Video Disks) are all basically the same.