Compact Disk

A compact disc or "CD" is a flat round disc used to store data. They are used to store music and other sounds (and sometimes called an "audio CD").

A standard CD-ROM can store up to 700 Megabytes of data. As a comparison a DVD can store about 4700 Megabytes of data.

In order to use a CD-ROM, you need a CD-ROM drive or (now more commonly) a DVD drive that can also read the disk.

CDs come in different formats:

  • CD-ROM - Read Only Memory
  • CD-RW - Read Write
  • CD-R - Recordable

Data is stored on the disk by 'burning' the disk. What actually happens is that a tiny laser beam burns a minute pit into the disk surface, each pit represents a binary bit. The pits are burnt in a spiral as the disk spins around at high speed in the drive.

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2020-10

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