Blank Media Buying Guide

Burn your own compact discs

CD burners were the first of the optical disc burners to gain popularity among home computer users, and nearly any newer DVD or Blu-ray burner will still be able to read and burn CDs. Blank CDs are quite inexpensive and, despite their capacities being much smaller than newer disc types, may still prove quite useful to any computer user. There have been several CD specifications over the years, but just two are of interest to home-users:

CD-R

These discs come in capacities ranging from 650MB (megabytes) to about 800MB, with the 700MB discs being the most common. Burning to these discs requires little more than a CD burner; while you need software that is capable of controlling the CD burner, any modern operating system is able to fulfill that role.

CD-Rs are a convenient way to move a moderate amount of data from one computer to another. Their low cost makes them borderline disposable, so they are great for when you want to distribute a few copies of some data to friends or transport some data without having to worry about getting the transport medium safely back home, as you would with something more costly, like a flash drive.

You can also burn audio to CD-Rs in a format that your car CD player can read. So if you don't like to leave the retail copies of your CDs in your car, consider burning a copy of each of your CDs and leaving those in your car; that way, if your CDs should happen to be stolen, you won't have lost anything valuable and you'll be able to easily make a new copy.

Once you burn data or audio to a CD-R, that data is permanent. If you don't fill a CD-R to capacity, you may still be able to write more data to it later, known as multi-session burning, but burning to a CD-R is otherwise a one-time process.

CD-RW

CD-RWs are similar to CD-Rs, with one significant difference: While you can basically just burn a CD-R once, you can burn a CD-RW many times. The unique materials used to make the surface of a CD-RW disc allow previously burned data to be "un-burned," so to speak. This means that you can completely rewrite the disc. (It should be no big surprise that the "RW" in CD-RW stands for "rewritable.") While manufacturers say that CD-RWs can be rewritten upwards of a thousand times, you may start to see the capacity of your CD-RWs shrink after several rewrites; this is because small areas of the disc start to go bad, so those areas are marked as unusable for future rewrites on that disc.

DVD-R and DVD+R

DVD-R was the original standard for DVD burners, and it touted a capacity far greater than that of CD-Rs. Nowadays, DVD-Rs have a capacity of about 4.7GB (gigabytes), or about six times that of CD-Rs. Not long after the introduction of DVD-Rs, a similar standard called DVD+R came out that incorporated features that make burns more reliable than with DVD-Rs. These standards have been around long enough that nearly any DVD burner will support both of them; also, blank DVD-Rs and DVD+Rs are close in price, with DVD-Rs typically being a few cents less per disc.

Aside from burning data to DVD-Rs and DVD+Rs, you can burn DVD video to these discs. This means that you can create your own videos and watch them on your home theater system. While some DVD video players may play your burned DVD-Rs and DVD+Rs just fine, others may have problems with DVD-Rs and may play more reliably with DVD+Rs and their improvements. If you plan on watching a lot of burned DVD videos on your home theater DVD player, you may want to test DVD-Rs and DVD+Rs to see if one type plays more reliably than the other.

DVD-RW and DVD+RW

Like CDs, there are standards for rewritable discs, known as DVD-RW and DVD+RW. Just like CD-RWs, these discs are said to be able to handle upwards to 1000 rewrites.

Dual-Layer DVDs

Have you ever been watching a DVD movie that you rented or bought and noticed a short pause about half way through the movie? More than likely, that was when the DVD player had to transition from the first "layer" of the DVD to the second. These dual-layer DVDs literally have twice the capacity of the standard 4.7GB DVD, and you can find dual-layer version of any of the aforementioned DVD disc types. Your DVD burner must specifically be able to support dual-layer discs, and DVDs burners generally burn dual-layer discs far slower than they can burn other DVD discs. Also, dual-layer DVDs are often far more expensive than regular DVD-Rs and DVD+Rs; don't be surprised to see dual-layer discs costing more than twice the price of their single-layer siblings.

BD-R and BD-RE

Blu-ray discs are a more recent phenomenon than CDs and DVDs, and Blu-ray burners are now available for your computer. The format for burnable Blu-ray discs is called BD-R, and it supports a capacity of about 25GB, or about six times that of single-layer DVDs. Like the other disc types, there's a rewritable format called BD-RE. Also, there are dual-layer BD-Rs that have a capacity of about 50GB.

Flash drives: an easy way to move your data

Burnable CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray discs are great for making copies of discs, for making backups of your data or for handing out your own creations. However, if you're more interested in a lightweight, portable device that you can use to transport data, you'll want to look into USB flash drives.

The basic USB flash drive has a capacity of anywhere from under a single GB to well over one-hundred GB, and capacities of flash drives will probably continue to grow. Flash drives have a USB interface, making them extremely easy to plug into one computer to get some data, unplug and carry to another computer to copy that data. They're not disposable like burnable discs but instead are an excellent choice for a small, portable accessory to let your carry data around. Many flash drives come on a neck strap, known as a lanyard, or use some other way to help you keep your flash drive from getting lost. Flash drives are reported to be able to handle up to 1 million rewrites, so they're a great choice for a long-lasting device that you can use to move data around whenever you need to.

SD cards and other media

SD memory cards are popular in digital cameras and other video equipment, and having an SD card reader for your computer makes it easy to move pictures or video from your camera to your computer. External card readers often connect through your USB port. Many printers have SD card readers built-in, so you can simply take the SD card from your camera and insert it into your printer to print the pictures you want. Also, some newer computer monitors have SD card readers built-in, making it exceptionally easy to insert the card and transfer images to your computer.

There's a handful of other various media types, such as tape drives, floppy discs and the like; floppy discs were once the preferred way to move data from one computer to another, but their small capacity has made them impractical for modern home-users. Tape drives often feature large capacities, but they also require expensive (and slow) equipment that makes them more useful for business applications than for home-users.