Compact Disc Recordable

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What Does Compact Disc Recordable Mean?

A compact disc recordable (CD-R) is a writable disc upon which a user can write
once and read many times. Once finalized, a CD-R disc cannot be formatted and data cannot
be deleted from it.

A compact disc recordable is also known as a compact disc – write once (CD-WO) or write once read many (WORM).

Techopedia Explains Compact Disc Recordable

The first CD-R was published by Sony and Philips in
1988. Data once written on the CD-R disc
cannot be deleted, and thus if data is not
written properly, it cannot be corrected. This is not to be confused with the compact disc rewritable (CD-RW), which can be altered after writing has been completed.

The CD-R
disc makes uses of a photosensitive organic dye to record information. CD-Rs
are made of a polycarbonate plastic substrate. A typical CD-R disc can store
650MB of data or 74 minutes of music.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert

Margaret is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.