Which Compact Disk Do I Need?

Several weeks ago I was shopping at Best Buy when a couple stared at the wall of compact disks. Underneath the man's arm was a hard drive. He wanted to buy compact disks but didn't know which ones were the correct ones. He asked the store clerk and my husband and I watched the faces of the customers as the sales clerk spoke his technical jargon. He might as well be speaking Japanese. The customers stared confusingly and muttered thanks. When the clerk walked away, they asked me if I could explain which disks they should buy.

In simple English, I explained that if you want to make compact disks to play music on a regular compact disk player, then you should buy CDR. CDR means compact disk Readable or Read-Only. They confessed that they needed that hard drive under his arm for their daughter who downloads MP3s (music). CDRs are used for files that will not change. If you want to save files that need to be modified in any way, then use the CDRW. CDRW means Compact Disk ReWritable. Files saved to these disks can be changed and resaved on that same disk. The CDRWs cost more, so if you buy the right disk for the right job, you'll be fine.

One of my favorite CD burners (programs to copy files to compact disks) came with my CD writable drive. It is Sony Extreme and it works great! You can copy disk to disk using one or more drives. How? If you only have one drive, the file will be transferred from the source disk to your computer's hard drive, then to the destination disk! Although I have more than one drive, I checked it out to see how it works. I wouldn't recommend a product without trying it first. I often drag and drop files in data to disk selection of the program. It is so quick and easy! There are options for open or closed session copying. Open session means you can save files to a disk now, then save more files to that disk at a later time. Closed session means you can only save files to the disk at this one session only. Though you can't add files to this disk, it is automatically protected.

Yvette Kuhns, Power Pages Web Design, June 2002

Note: People using a Mac may buy a DVD burner with software that may not be fully compatible with your operating system. Try downloading free alternatives to see what works for you!

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