CD-Rs or CD-RWs

[Lead Head]

Wich do you prefer, CD-Rs or CD-RWs?

[Refalm]

CD-R's for my old CD player, which doesn't like CD-RW's.

For all other stuff, CD-RW's.

[solemnwarning]

CD-R's

[piratePenguin]

CD-Rs.
Haven't ever used a CD-RW.

[worker201]

Whatever is cheaper and most portable - CDRs tend to be more reliable in various optical devices, such as home cd players, car cd players, CD-RW drives, DVD-RW drives, and others.

[MrX]

CD-RWs are better. you can write them 1000 times. CD-Rs only once. and they if you screw up, it's garbage. what a waste! buy 1000 CD-Rs for one CD-RW, which is only about the price of 4-6 CD-Rs ? That's what I thought. be smart, butter tart.

[Orethrius]

CD-RWs are better. you can write them 1000 times. CD-Rs only once. and they if you screw up, it's garbage. what a waste! buy 1000 CD-Rs for one CD-RW, which is only about the price of 4-6 CD-Rs ? That's what I thought. be smart, butter tart.

Seriously, did you just pull that number fresh from your ass?  CD-Rs are infinitely cheaper than CD-RWs, and it has more to do with market dynamics than technological standards.  What's a couple coasters to have a disc that runs on ANYTHING made in the past decade (whereas CD-RW makes no such guarantee)?  

[solemnwarning]

You are wrong, isometimes use cd-rw:

if i burn a music cd-r i cant copy it to my xbox (illeagle disk apparently)

if i burn a music cd-rw it isnt checked for copy protection by xbox

[Pathos]

CD-R, Most of the stuff I download I want to keep a permanent copy of.

[Calum]

they use different technologies, up to a point. to me, cdrs are more (seemingly) stable and sensible, also i can get them to work. plus, why would you want to wipe a CD once you had used it? you're either doing a backup (which you won't want to wipe) or your copying something for somebody.

i've always used cdrs and haven't ever needed to use cdrws so, why should i change?
i will look into dvdrs too sometime, but again, don't see the point for me personally of using dvdrws if such a thing exists.

[Aloone_Jonez]

Megabump.

Who uses CDs these days when there are DVDs and USB sticks?

I do because I find my CD burner is more reliable.

I use RW-CDs for Linux (I've never tried a bootable USB stick and don't even know if my BIOS supports it) and don't use CD-Rs much.

I can see the advantage of both technologies. I don't know how compatible DVD-RWs are with modern DVD players?

[reactosguy]

Wich do you prefer, CD-Rs or CD-RWs?

Neither. I'd go with DVDs and flash memory USBs. The former has a large capacity, while the latter is easy to get in your pocket.

I'd also go with Blu-ray Discs, but they aren't compatible with my old hardware.

[piratePenguin]

The question was asked in 2005, and I said I never used a cd-rw and that still applies (if it happens that I did, it wasn't my disk and I never re-wrote anything).

DVDs and usb keys and memory sticks and online data are becoming that we often don't need to have a cd/dvd drive. Many notebooks I'm interested in don't even have cd/dvd drives. That technology will stick around, for sure reasons, but many many people haven't used their mechanical drives in years, on computers for now.

[bedouin]

I use CD-RWs with my CD-Js fairly often.  If I'm using a set of discs for just one set there's no sense in wasting CD-Rs.

[Aloone_Jonez]

they use different technologies, up to a point. to me, cdrs are more (seemingly) stable and sensible, also i can get them to work. plus, why would you want to wipe a CD once you had used it? you're either doing a backup (which you won't want to wipe)

CD-Rs are not stable, if they're not correctly stored, the data can become corrupt over time.

For long term storage, you should always use a hard drive, a flash drive is also good but there are concerns about the data not lasting for ever.

I frequently erase backups because the data becomes out of date and replaced by modifications.

For backup, I don't see how capacity of a DVD is a problem, unless you make your own films or have taken thousands of photos. All of the large files I have are pretty dispensable and are only backed up because downloading them again would be a pain. Come to think of it, the amount of irreplaceable data I have (i.e. created by me or someone else) is probably under 1GB.