“You are your choices.” Seneca

To continue from yesterdays post about removable media I want to talk about CDs and DVDs. Both are great and really good. We do not have to worry about this media too much. It just seems to work unless you get a serious scratch on the disc and this can usually be buffed out enough to get the data. The problem with these options is the hardware. You need to have a burner or the hardware in your computer that does the recording. Now computers come standard with CD burners but this means you can use CDs and record on them but it does not do anything with DVDs. This can be confusing. However DVD burners usually can do both CDs and DVDs. Now a regular CD can store up to 700 MB while a normal DVD can store up to 4.7 GB or 48oo MB. Any of these can be used for media as well. Meaning I can store everything I have ever written on a DVD or I can burn a movie I made to it so it can be watched on a regular DVD player hooked to a TV. The same thing goes for CDs and music. Now to make this more confusing there are types of DVDs called double layer. This means you can store up to 8.5 GB on a single disc. Not every DVD burner has the ability to use double layer so be careful. The other consideration is rewritable formats. This means you can record on a CD or DVD multiple times. I am not a big fan of these because I find them unreliable and more expensive. I like the ones you burn once and then toss if it is useless data. They make great Frisbees or craft items (scales of a fish). Lastly be aware of your burner and what type of media it uses. As an example some burners only use CD-R minus so in this case do not buy CD-R plus. The best thing to do is look up the manufacturer of your hardware and see what they suggest. Give it a try.

Note: Picture is from artist George Radebaugh. See other sculptures made out of recycled Cds