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It took CDs five short years to completely dominate cassette tapes, and even now with MP3 technology they are still prevalent and an important carrier of music and computer software. CD burners made it easy for people to copy information onto a CD to make their own mixes or personalized CDs. In order to understand how a CD burner is... more »
New to the Macintosh platform and not sure how to burn a CD? You are merely mouse clicks away from creating your own data disc using your Mac's CD burner. more »
You may not know this, but you have CD-burning capabilities built right into Windows. No other software or special CDs are needed to use this. This function can be used for audio and video files alike. more »
It's always nice to have a CD full of your favorite tunes. You can also save data on a CD. It's not too hard to make a CD at home using your computer. As long as you have the right equipment, you can make your own CD. more »
Burning a copy of a CD to a blank disk is straightforward with CD burning software. However, the AutoRun function is lost when the disk is copied using the Copy CD option. To maintain the hidden AutoRun files, an image of the CD must be created, then burned to the blank CD. more »
An external CD burner offers the same features as an internal burner, though with a more secure case to help protect its components from damage.... more »
If you're having problems with your CD burner, the first thing you need to do is determine what is causing the problems. Once you've done that,... more »
Although CD burning is considered an easy job, there are a variety of problems that you may encounter. Most of the problems can be rectified with... more »
There are two types of CD burners available on the market for your PC: internal and external. The external CD burner needs a separate power... more »
While most new computers come with either a DVD or CD burner, the ease with which upgrades can be made make external drives an attractive option... more »
In computing, an optical disc drive (ODD) is a disk drive that uses laser light or electromagnetic waves near the light spectrum as part of the process of reading or writing data to or from optical discs. Some drives can only read from discs, but recent drives are commonly both readers and recorders. Recorders are sometimes called burners or writers. Compact discs, DVDs, HD DVDs and Blu-ray discs are common types of optical media which can be read and recorded by such drives.
Optical disc drives are an integral part of stand-alone consumer appliances such as CD players, DVD players and DVD recorders. They are also very commonly used in computers to read software and consumer media distributed in disc form, and to record discs for archival and data exchange. Optical drives—along with flash memory—have mostly displaced floppy disk drives and magnetic tape drives for this purpose because of the low cost of optical media and the near-ubiquity of optical drives in computers and consumer entertainment hardware.
Disc recording is generally restricted to small-scale backup and distribution, being slower and more materially expensive per unit than the moulding process used to mass-manufacture pressed discs.
Laser and optics
The most important part of an optical disc drive is an optical path, placed in a pickup head (PUH),dvd>
usually consisting of semiconductor laser, a lens for guiding the laser beam, and photodiodes detecting the light reflection from discs surface.cd>
Initially, CD lasers with a wavelength of 780 nm were used, being within infrared range. For DVDs, the wavelength was reduced to 650 nm (red color), and the wavelength for Blu-Ray Disc was reduced to 405 nm (violet color).
Two main servomechanisms are used, the first one to maintain a correct distance between lens and disc, and ensure the laser beam is focused on a small laser spot on the disc. The second servo moves a head along the discs radius, read more at » http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical+disc+drive
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