| Short
for Compact Disk-Recordable drive, a type of disk drive that can
create CD-ROMs and audio CDs. This allows users to "master"
a CD-ROM or audio CD for publishing. Until recently, CD-R drives
were quite expensive, but prices have dropped dramatically.
A feature of many CD-R drives, called multisession recording,
enables you to keep adding data to a CD-ROM over time. This is
extremely important if you want to use the CD-R drive to create
backup CD-ROMs.
To create CD-ROMs and audio CDs, you'll need not only a CD-R drive,
but also a CD-R software package. Often, it is the software package,
not the drive itself, that determines how easy or difficult it
is to create CD-ROMs. CD-R drives can also read CD-ROMs and play
audio CDs. |
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