Born to Burn

CD-Writers were once a costly affair. You had to pay thousands of bucks just to get a single CD replicated, and it took hours to burn one. And, if you got a buffer under-run error, it meant going back to the drawing board. Today, the scenario has completely changed–CD-Writers have become just another peripheral. Their prices have hit rock-bottom and their performance has reachead great heights

CD-Writers have come a long way in a short span of just a few years. To think that the initial models burnt data at a speed of 2x seems laughable considering the 40x drives of today. These allow you to burn a full 650 MB CD-R in just a few minutes. Such high speeds have opened many new avenues for users. For one, CD-Writers have evolved into CD- ReWriters, allowing you to not only burn data, but also to reburn it, as if you were using a hard disk. Then there’s the CD-burning software, which has evolved from being cumbersome and difficult to use to become extremely user friendly.

	Hidden in Nero Some exciting features of Nero, one of the most widely used CD-burning software
	Burn It Right It’s easy to curse your CD-writer, but the following tips will save you the need
	Which Format? A look at various CD formats and what they imply
	The CD-Rewriter Shootout We checked out the drives in two categories–IDE and external USB–and found that the winners had a good combination of price, performance, and features
	Writing a New Trend Some interesting trends of the super fast CD-Writers we reviewed this time
	What makes a Winner The methodology we used to rank the CD-Rewriters we tested
	CD-ReWriter Performance Results
	Cd re-writers Specs

So what are these great things you can do with a CD-Writer, or rather ReWriter, today? You can use CD-R media for taking regular backups of critical data quickly and easily. This, of course, is limited to 650-700 MB, which is the capacity of most CD-R media. The media is reliable, has a long lifetime, and is fairly inexpensive. Just go to any shop at Nehru Place, Delhi, or Lamington Road, Mumbai, and you’ll find reams of CD-R media being sold like cotton candy. You can use CD-Writers for quick data exchange and archiving your business as well as personal data. You can burn your important presentations, projects, or your MP3s that take up unnecessary space on your hard drive.

Then there’s the CD-RW media, which is reusable. While you can use CD-R to store static data, CD-RW can be used for backing up data that keeps changing, such as your accounts figures or database records. Just like the burning speed of CD-Writers is increasing, the media must also have the capability to handle these speeds. So you have different speeds, such as 16x or 24x for CD-R, and 8x, 10x, etc for CD-RW media. Today, 24x is the common speed for CD-R media, though 40x CD-Writers have already appeared in the market.

Hopefully, by the time you read this article, the compatible media should also become available. CD-RW speeds also face a similar problem, with the drives supporting up to 12x, and media available only at 10x. The Read/Write/ReWrite speeds are usually mentioned on the CD-Rewriter and the media.

Application of CD-Writers also depends upon the model. Today, you have models that fit inside the PC, as well as mobile versions that plug into a USB or Firewire port. A network administrator, for instance, can use an external CD-Writer to backup data from different servers, or even client machines.

Neelima Vaid