by David Hakala

CD and DVD recording media are simple plastic things that should be easy to buy. But there is quite a bit to know about blank discs before you purchase.

First, there’s spelling. ‘Disk’ refers to magnetic media such as hard drives and floppies (if you remember floppies). “Disc” refers to optical media such as CD, DVD, and Blu-Ray.

Next, there are discs that can be recorded only once and discs that are “re-writable”, that can be erased and recorded again just like magnetic disks. A CD-R disc is record-once, a CD-RW is re-writable. A DVD-R or DVD+R is record-once, and a DVD-RW or DVD+RW is re-writable.
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