Today we are going to talk about burning CDs, DVDs, and Blu-rays. Sadly, this is not a bonfire ritual, it is the act of writing data to the disc.
Got Any Matches?
No! No matches. No lighters. No rubbing two sticks together. It’s not that kind of burning. When referring to discs, such as CDs, burning is a way to write information to those discs. Instead of asking for fiery implements, you should instead ask for a CD, DVD, or Blu-ray burner.
Should I Burn CDs, DVDs, or Blu-Rays?
There are three common disc types in use now. The first and oldest is known as the compact disc, or CD. CDs are cheap and fast compared to the other disc types; however, they typically only hold 700 megabytes of data.
Digital versatile discs, or DVDs, were the successor to CDs. DVDs hold either 4.7 gigabytes or 8.5 gigabytes depending on whether it is “single-layer” or “double-layer.” The smaller single-layer option is cheaper and faster than the double-layer, but doesn’t hold as much data.
Blu-ray discs are the newest entrants to the lineup. They hold either 25 gigabytes for single-layer, or 50 gigabytes for dual-layer, and are the most expensive and are slightly slower than DVDs. There is a variation on the Blu-ray technology that allows up to 128 gigabytes on the disc, but that hasn’t gained widespread support yet.
When choosing the type of disc you are going to use, it is usually best to select the cheapest one that is large enough to hold what you need. If you are only burning 100 megabytes of data, doing it on a CD is faster and cheaper than on a dual-layer DVD. Modern burner drives will write to any of the three. To give you an idea of the costs involved, listed below is a burner drive, and the various types of discs available.
