cd drive

English - English

Definition of cd drive in English English dictionary: device used in a computer to read information; A drive mechanism for recording or playing CDs The most common types are CD-ROM, MO (magneto-optical), and WORM (Write Once, Read Many); A device that either records or plays CDs; A Compact Disc drive, used to read data CDs (also called CD-ROMs) A CD can store up to 650 Megabytes (millions of characters) These days, new programs and data are often distributed on CD-ROM, so a CD-Drive is almost mandatory A CD-RW drive is able to write to special CD media (either CD-Recordable or CD-ReWritable) CD-Recordable media can be written only once, but can be read as often as you wish CD-ReWritable media can be written multiple times (a minimum of 1000 times) Both types of media are available from office supply stores as well as computer stores CD-R media is currently costing about $1 25 - $2 50 each, while CD-RW costs about $10 - $20 each CD-RW drives are used both to backup data from your computer and to make data copies for transport to other computers Be careful with CD-RW media - very few older CD-ROM drives can read these discs; A disk drive that reads Compact Disks (CD) Also called a CD-ROM Drive Until recently this was a read only device but recent advances have made drives that also write CDs affordable A CD drive able to both read and write is called a CD R/W Drive See also DVD Drive; a drive that reads a compact disc and that is connected to an audio system; A device that either records or plays CDs such as a CD-ROM drive