How to Choose the Right PC Components - Part 3 - the Optical Drives
The optical writable drive is now a standard component for most PCs. You have the option of a CD writer or a DVD writer. CD writer or re-writers (also called CDRW drives) burn data and music to CDs up to 700MBs or 80 minutes of music. Depending on the media you use, you can also write and re-write data to the disk, like you can with a floppy drive. (Note this doesn’t work when making a music CD.) A CD Writer also reads CDs.
Similar to CDRW drives, DVD-RW drives allow you to read, write and rewrite data to DVDs, up to 4.7GB. You can also burn up to 2 hours of video on a DVD (but like music CDs you can only write the data once.) On top of that DVD writers can also read DVDs (even your DVD movies), CDs, and write and rewrite CDs, like a CDRW. These drives may be $50 - $100 more than a CDRW.
To complicate matters, there are two DVD writing formats: DVD+R/RW and DVD-R/RW (sometimes you’ll see plus sign on top of the minus in the PCs specs.) There is no single industry standard, but fortunately, there’s no need to determine which format is superior. When you purchase a DVD writer, make sure it supports both. Typically you’ll see it marked as DVD+/-R/RW or you’ll see the plus sign on top of the minus sign, signaling in the specs that the drive supports both formats.
Like hard drives, optical drives can connect to either a SATA channel or an IDE channel. Although SATA optical drives aren’t as prevalent as SATA hard drives, higher end PCs will offer that option especially with the DVD burners (which already cost more.) To keep cost down in a PC you may only see an IDE CD or DVD writer. Eventually the older IDE (also called ATAPI) interface will be phased out.
In Part Four, we’ll discuss the other components of a system.
Mike Tanney
Product Manager
HLP Associates, Inc.
www.hlp.net
Similar to CDRW drives, DVD-RW drives allow you to read, write and rewrite data to DVDs, up to 4.7GB. You can also burn up to 2 hours of video on a DVD (but like music CDs you can only write the data once.) On top of that DVD writers can also read DVDs (even your DVD movies), CDs, and write and rewrite CDs, like a CDRW. These drives may be $50 - $100 more than a CDRW.
To complicate matters, there are two DVD writing formats: DVD+R/RW and DVD-R/RW (sometimes you’ll see plus sign on top of the minus in the PCs specs.) There is no single industry standard, but fortunately, there’s no need to determine which format is superior. When you purchase a DVD writer, make sure it supports both. Typically you’ll see it marked as DVD+/-R/RW or you’ll see the plus sign on top of the minus sign, signaling in the specs that the drive supports both formats.
Like hard drives, optical drives can connect to either a SATA channel or an IDE channel. Although SATA optical drives aren’t as prevalent as SATA hard drives, higher end PCs will offer that option especially with the DVD burners (which already cost more.) To keep cost down in a PC you may only see an IDE CD or DVD writer. Eventually the older IDE (also called ATAPI) interface will be phased out.
In Part Four, we’ll discuss the other components of a system.
Mike Tanney
Product Manager
HLP Associates, Inc.
www.hlp.net
posted by Derek Rowan at
10:19 AM
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