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ASUS CD-R/RW Drive User’s Manual
VI. APPENDIX
VI.
Appnedix
Glossar
y
CD-RW
The Best Way to Create Your Own CDs
—With Re-usable CD-RW
CD-ReWritable (CD-RW) gives you the opportunity to create your own
CDs, in the best and most cost-effective way. CD-RW is, in fact, the logi-
cal extension of CD-Recordable (CD-R). Together, they give you the op-
portunity to run the media that best suits the job in hand.
CD-RW supports the recording of small packages of data, using incremen-
tal packet writing in the universal (UDF) file format. As with floppy discs,
you have the option of writing a disc all at once, or building it up bit by bit
- and re-using the disc later for other data.
CD-RW media can be rewritten hundreds, or even thousands of times. This
means that the overall running costs, for hardware and software together,
can be very economical indeed.
CD-RW will greatly extend your personal short-term storage capacity, pro-
viding space for large-volume files like Internet downloads, backups, and
hard disc dumps. It is also excellent for low-quantity multimedia applica-
tions, from one-off disc testing to small-scale distribution.
Multiread: Making CD-RW Media Compatible with
CD-ROM and DVD-ROM
CD-RW media reflects less laser light than the other CD media. To play all
CD media, drives must be able to adapt to these different reflectivities.
For compatibility, drives need to do this in a standard way. They also need
to interface and interact with their host computer systems in a standard
way.
That standard way is MultiRead. And any CD drive can play all CD media
—CD-Digital Audio, CD-ROM, CD-R, and CD-RW—provided that it sup-
ports MultiRead.
What is more, MultiRead extends the same compatibility to DVD. All DVD
equipment that supports MultiRead will also be able to retrieve CD-RW
data. This means that you can go ahead now with storing valuable data on
CD-RW media, safe in the knowledge that it will be future-proof.